Veracities & Visionaries
by SpellCleaver
Summary: Alina was a scavenger before she had a run in with a Sith Lord and was taken to be trained as a Jedi. Now she's caught up in politics she doesn't understand, being manipulated by her friend, and forced into a war she doesn't want. What happens next will change the galaxy forever. / No need to have seen Star Wars to understand this fic. Prequel to Mercenaries & Missionaries.
1. Episode I

**Hi, so this is the prequel to my other story, _Mercenaries & Missionaries_, that no one asked for but I went and wrote anyway because I figured it would make the ending I'm going to give that fic sadder. I don't think you have to read that one before this, though if you don't know Star Wars particularly well, that might explain some stuff you don't understand. Otherwise, you can just read this like it is, and ask questions in the reviews if you don't understand something, and _you do not have to have seen SW to understand this fic_.**

 **Sorry if the characters in this are a bit OOC - I'm not as used to writing them as I am the SOC cast - and please tell me if they are, so I can try to fix it. Updates will be on Fridays. Not much happens in this chapter in particular, but it's after this that the plot really starts moving forwards.**

 **Another quick note: the way the Jedi are presented in this is a very simplified, slightly demonised version of them. I know that in the SW fandom a lot about the morality of the Jedi Order is highly subjective and grey, and while the Jedi Order was deeply flawed, it's nowhere near as flawed as I present it in this. Here, its flaws are for plot convenience, because I don't have the time to fully debate it. I just want to make it clear that I know this isn't the correct interpretation of them, and that there are a lot of good things that aren't touched on here. Also, I made up everything about Jakku. Nothing about Jakku n this is accurate to the SW universe.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy, or Star Wars. They each belong to their respective owners.**

* * *

 **.**

 **Part I: Peace**

 **.**

The Teedos called the sandstorm that plagued the land _X'us'R'iia_. That is, they called every storm _X'us'R'iia_ , because they believed every storm came back again and again, was just one part of a massive whole; the snippets of the temperamental goddess _R'iia_ 's never-ending wrath, which rained down upon them the way water never did on Jakku as punishment for the sins of the Teedo people. It, according to the legend, was at fault for everything that had gone wrong in their history: the famine near and around the area of Niima Outpost, the fact that the rivers had been soaked up and dried to non-existence by the sand dunes, and the fact that the invaders had come.

Teedos weren't human. Few even thought they were from Jakku in the first place but they hated the new settlers like they were, anyway. They fought with them over food, water, resources; they stole, they injured, they killed. _If an interloper has something_ , Teedos would say, _then stealing from them or hurting them is not wrong, because they have no right to have property or even lives here in the first place._

There wasn't an ongoing war between the Teedos and the other species, but it was best to be alert anyway. Even better to practice whatever fighting style you took to as much as possible, as often as possible.

Which was what Alina should be doing.

She sighed, and glanced towards the door of the ramshackle tumble of metal she called a home. It was no use: she could still see the sand flying through the cracks at the bottom and sides. _R'iia_ still had some wrath left in her.

Unconsciously, she rubbed her stomach. _X'us'R'iia_ had lasted, if she'd counted correctly, six full rotations already. While Alina was no stranger to pushing the limits of a human's physical endurance, the fact remained that she'd run out of rations yesterday, and she was now going hungry.

And she missed Mal.

 _At least the storm will shift the sands,_ she mused. _If I'm quick, I might be able to get to whatever new trinket is brought to the surface before the other scavengers do._

If she survived that long. Glancing at the door again, she stretched out her aching joints, frowning at the cracking noise they gave, and reached for her knives, pinned to the tilted wall behind her. As long and thin as her forearms, she'd dug them out of the wreckage of an archaeologist's ship when she was thirteen and used whatever spare parts or tools she had to sand and sharpen them into some sort of usable condition. She didn't like blasters much - they relied too heavily on resources Jakku simply didn't have, like tibanna gas for the power pack - but she liked her knives. They served her well in close-quarters combat, and on the rare occasions someone _was_ shooting a blaster at her, she could use them to deflect the bolt right back at the shooter, even as the metal blackened and curled and needed maintenance whenever she did.

They needed maintenance now. So. . . it was as good a time as any to get out the whetstone she'd scrounged from somewhere or other and begin.

She scraped away at the edges for several hours. If she'd known anything about swordsmanship, she would've been worried about wearing the metal until it was brittle and snapped off easily, leaving a jagged edge behind - after all, the edges were already riddled with nocks and points where exactly that had happened. But Alina didn't know anything about swordsmanship - she fought to survive, not for sport - so she didn't care. All she cared about was that it hurt when she hit someone with it - hurt enough that they ran away and didn't bother her again.

Instead, she was worried about something else.

There was a charity delegation coming. They came from time to time - never more often than once a cycle - and Alina had long since learned how to interpret the signs that meant they were due soon enough. Ana Kuya always had her scavengers scrubbing the Outpost to make it look more presentable in exchange for extra rations, and she even paid more for every scrap of junk scavengers handed in, no doubt so fewer bellies grumbled when the delegation came.

After all, the delegations had been a pretty annual fixture for years, and Ana didn't want to threaten that. They always brought money, and food, and spare parts; it was a good way to get something for nothing, an action that almost never worked on Jakku. Stealing was swiftly punished, and it's not like you got much in the first place. It was less like getting something for nothing, and more like giving everything and getting the bare minimum you could possibly get.

So if Ana was suddenly worried about her image as a harsh, unanimously hated junk boss scaring off the charities, then that meant they were coming. Soon. And recently, she _had_ (slightly) lifted her stranglehold on all trade that went on in Niima Outpost, employing fewer thugs to intimidate the scavengers.

Which was why Alina had made enough profit in the past week that her rations had lasted her four days of _X'us'R'iia_ before she went hungry. But it could all be for nothing if _R'iia_ wasn't appeased within a few days; no delegation, no matter how charitable, would risk wading through such a fierce storm to deliver supplies. Not when there were plenty of other outposts around the planet _not_ besieged by storms which needed the aid just as badly.

Alina put down the whetstone; the continual scraping was setting her nerves on edge. That, and the continual, unrelenting howl of the wind. . .

What would happen if the delegation didn't come this year? She couldn't imagine she would survive it. Simply put, she was at her thinnest she ever was, and usually she managed to put on some muscle when the charities brought good food, not just rations, that didn't taste like shit.

If she didn't get that, she knew she'd get weaker and weaker, until she couldn't move at all. Mal would try to help, of course, but he struggled to provide for himself, let alone the both of them; eventually he'd just leave her behind to be smothered by the desert, nothing but skin and bones. Maybe the sand would leech the water from her flesh and stop her from rotting, preserve her body for an unfortunate scavenger to stumble upon in the distant future. A morbid reminder of where, ultimately, every scavenger was headed.

The worst thing about it all, she felt, was the sheer loneliness in the thought of being forgotten to the shifting dunes of the desert.

She shook her head. Where would the delegation come from this time? she wondered, forcing her thoughts away from the topic. The most common was Alderaan, though Chandrila also sent quite a lot of aid. Nothing from Coruscant, nor the stuck up sleemos who lived there, but other Core or Inner Rim planets, maybe. . .?

It didn't matter.

She shook her head again suddenly inexplicably tired. She let her knives drop from her hand and skitter across the floor. The sand kept pummelling at the door, _boom_ , _boom_ , _boom_ , with the occasional _clang_ of metal on metal to liven it up a bit. It was the music that lulled her thoughts as she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

"I'm afraid, Mayor, that a violent sandstorm has been ravaging the local area for several days," Zoya said in a deadpan voice. "There's simply no way we can fly through it to deliver the supplies you insist on - _especially_ when guaranteeing your safety, which, if you'll remember," she sent him a pointed glare, "is what I was actually assigned to do."

"It's _'Prince'_ , actually, Master Jedi," Lantsov sniped right back at her. "I was elected Prince of Theed two years ago."

"I thought princes were part of a monarchy."

"They are. The monarchy on Naboo is democratic."

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk, like he was making fun of her, but Zoya could sense he was being truthful: Naboo genuinely _did_ have a democratic monarchy.

Perhaps she should've known that. She _had_ meant to do some research on Naboo, and Nikolai Lantsov in particular, before departing for her mission, but she just hadn't had the time. Baghra had been sniping at her, insulting her. . . Zoya had patience for very few things, but the lectures of the Grandmaster of the Order were something she'd been forced to make patience for, as little as she enjoyed them. Afterwards, she'd just wanted a break.

"Well then, _Your Highness_ ," she sneered. She didn't know if that was actually the correct address, but by this point, she didn't care. "Surely we can go to another part of the planet that's _not_ being ravaged by the storm? Or even," she added, glancing around her, taking in the elegant Nubian architecture, the rolling emerald fields, the sunlight bathing everything in a warm glow, "remain here, in Theed?"

She would _love_ to stay in Theed. Naboo was the fashion capital of the galaxy - there was no such thing as 'overdressed' here - and it was known as being one of the most beautiful planets as well. She could see that already: the pale blue stone of the buildings, the constant background trickle of the waterfall the city sat on, the curves and gentle domes of the architecture. . . It was wonderful, and Zoya never wanted to leave.

Unfortunately, as long as she stayed here, she was bound to protect the Prince. That was her mandate as a Jedi, and it would be the height of impropriety were she to break it.

"I'm aware that all the teenagers and young people in the world want to experience the delights of our beautiful city," Lantsov said, gesturing around at the place, from the carved bench they were sitting on to the bright cobblestones, "but surely _Jedi_ , no matter their age, know how to prioritise people's lives over simple fashion?"

Zoya ground her teeth together. At twenty, she'd been considered abnormally young to transition to full Jedi Knight, and she was tired about being taunted about her age. "You're only a year older than me."

"True," he admitted. "But on Naboo those of us in politics start early. Our current queen was elected when she was. . . twelve, I think? Though that is the youngest in recent history. I myself joined the Apprentice Legislators when I was eleven."

Zoya shook her head. "That's. . ." _Absurd. Strange. A supremely bad idea._

Lantsov grinned. "I know. But we believe young people - especially young women - have a childlike wisdom that's more pure than an adult's. So our monarchs are often teenage girls."

"That will lead the planet to ruin." Zoya didn't bother to regulate her voice, and several passersby shot her a scandalised look at the insult to their democracy, before their eyes fell on the lightsaber at her hip and they looked away.

Lantsov bristled slightly, but he gestured around them. "It's been like this for three hundred years. We don't seem to be any worse for wear." He smiled slyly. "And, bringing us back to our original conversation, if things are going as well as they are here, shouldn't we spread that wealth to those in need? Jakku needs those supplies."

"I was under the impression that only Alderaan, Chandrila, and a handful of other worlds have ever sent supplies," Zoya said stiffly. "Naboo has never sent any."

"Nor have the Jedi," Lantsov said, and for a moment there was a hardness to his voice - almost an accusation. But then it was gone, and he was his amiable self again. "But there's a first for everything."

"That doesn't change the fact that it's not _safe_ for you," Zoya insisted. "Not only is it a lawless place, with Force knows what lethal wildlife, but you _have_ been the target of three assassination attempts already, yes? They could easily target you there - it's not exactly a _secret_ that that's where you're planning to go.

"And there's still the matter of the storm." She pulled out a holo and brandished it, calling up an image of Jakku's surface, of the swirling vortex that consumed half of it. "It's been going for nearly a week now; who knows how much longer it will run?"

Lantsov shook his head. "Master Jedi, you disappoint me," he chided. "You didn't do _any_ research about the planet beyond the fact that there was a storm going on?"

Zoya didn't respond. She hadn't, but she wasn't about to admit that, was she?

Lantsov sighed, and pulled out his on holo, several of them, pointing at the rapid increase then decrease in size of the vortex. "This type of storm is common on Jakku - they call it _X'us'R'iia_. It never lasts for more than eight days. It's already lasted six, as you said, and how long is the hyperspace journey from Naboo to Jakku?"

"Forty-eight hours," Zoya said sullenly.

"Exactly. So by the time we get there, it will have long settled down, and the locals will be even more in need of our supplies." Lantsov cocked his head. "Unless you'd rather let them starve, _Master Jedi_?"

She really hated the way he said that. "My mandate is to protect you."

"Then come along," he challenged. His eyes glinted as she glared at him. "Protect me."

She sighed. "Fine, then," she said through gritted teeth. "I guess we're going to Jakku."

"So glad you could see reason," he said cheerfully, jumping to his feet and offering her his hand. She declined it, standing up herself. He remained unfazed. "We'll be setting off at sunrise tomorrow."

It was a moment before he added, smiling, "Oh - and make sure you do some research on what Jakku is really like." He looked her up and down. "Jakku is _not_ for the faint of heart."

An angry splutter forced its way out of her mouth - her, a _Jedi_ , _faint of heart_? - but he was already turning away.

* * *

 _X'us'R'iia_ lasted longer than Alina had ever seen it, and she was already pushed to the very limit. Her legs shook as she forced herself onto her feet after waking - she had to brace herself against the wall of the shelter to prevent herself toppling over. It didn't matter: she fell to the ground anyway, and just lay there for a moment.

She was so hungry.

Her limbs were still trembling like cloth in high winds; if she stood up, she doubted she'd stay that way for long. So she just lay there, sandy floor rough against her bruised cheek, and was only half-aware of her eyes sliding closed.

She was only away that she'd drifted off when she came too, a loud banging noise coming from her door. Weakly, she groaned and tried to roll herself onto her back, where she leaned against the wall in order to maintain a sitting position. She'd barely done so before the person knocking being impatient and just barged in. It wasn't like she had the gear to build herself a sturdy lock.

Unsurprisingly, it was Mal.

She looked up at him, at the thick locks of scraggly, uneven hair that flopped in his eyes, the gentle smile his face took on when he saw her there, his broad frame which blocked out the sun and allowed for a brief reprieve while she lay in his shadow.

Then he crouched down, and his shadow shrank, but it was okay because he was reaching for her, one hand settling on her shoulder and the other on her waist. She rolled into his touch.

"Blast it, Alina," he said, though she didn't know why he was surprised. This wasn't a rare occurrence. "How long did your rations last? Six rotations? Five?"

"Four."

He swore under his breath, and reached for his pocket, where he popped the seal on one of the rations packets. They both watched the grey powder inside oxidise and expand into an unappetising grey lump before he handed it to her. "Here."

She lifted her hand to take it, but it was shaking so badly that she dropped it, and it rolled a few metres away. Mal cursed again and fetched it, this time pressing it into her hand but not letting go of her wrist, guiding it to her mouth instead.

She ate ravenously, feeling her stomach churn at the first food she'd had in days. She hadn't run out of water, thankfully - her containers were still half-full - but food was another matter.

She finished the first ration soon enough, eating slowly to stop herself being sick, then Mal let his hand fall away from her face and popped open a second one, feeding that to her too. She felt her stomach roil after it was done, and sagged against the wall, letting her head loll to the side; she wouldn't be able to keep anymore of it down.

She'd lost count of the amount of times Mal had saved her life like this. Had found her, near dead on the floor after a particularly long sandstorm, and fed his from his own rations, his own lifeline. He kept her alive off his own back, and for the life of her she didn't know why.

It wasn't like she was any use to him. Alina needed Mal far more than he needed her.

He scrunched up the packet the rations had been in and tossed it aside. "You really need start fighting for a better exchange every time you deal with Ana," he told her.

She sighed. She'd lost count of the amount of times he'd told her that already, but she just wasn't the sort of person who wanted to start a confrontation. If she was given half a portion for a part that someone else had received a whole ration for, she would object, but back down at the first challenge. She didn't have the temerity to survive on a planet like this; the only reason she could was because of Mal.

Because Mal, for some reason, would be bothered if she died.

At her lack of response, he just sighed again and offered her a hand. When she struggled to pull herself up, still too weak, he looped an arm under her arms and pulled her up himself, letting her lean against him. He was always so much stronger than her, even after long days without food, mainly for two reasons.

One was that he was physically bigger and stronger. It was natural, and it also meant he could fight better, and fewer people were willing to steal food from or double cross him, so he often got more portions than she did for doing the same amount of work.

And the second was that he was handsome. People often just felt sympathy for him, seeing what such a pretty, talented boy had been reduced to doing just because of where he was born. Even his shaggy, dirty countenance worked in his favour: people saw these traits as endearing on him, while Alina, on the other hand, wasn't pretty or pitiful enough to pull them off. With nothing but skin and bones, a frame her clothes barely hung onto, and a permanently haggard expression, respectable folk, even from the charity delegations, tended to keep their distance from her.

Both of these meant that Mal got more food than her, on average, so his stocks always lasted longer than hers did, and he could always hold out for however long the storms raged.

They took a few steps to help Alina regain her balance, then she said, "I think I can walk myself from here." And she could: she staggered away from him, grabbed her goggles off the wall and her sled off the floor, then outside, into the harsh sunlight.

Just in time to see foreign ships fly over.

Her glum mood instantly evaporated. "Mal!" she shouted, but he was already behind her - he'd heard the hum of the ships' sublight engines - and he was laughing too.

"I know." He grinned at her, something painfully close to hope shining on his features. "We're saved."

Because those ships were as familiar to scavengers as _X'us'R'iia_ , or the rations they ate. They came every year, like the reprieve of a winter that was marginally cooler than summer.

The charity delegations were here.

* * *

"Dropping out of lightspeed now," the pilot said as they approached Jakku. Nikolai nodded in acknowledgement, then left the cockpit to prepare for the landing.

This was Naboo's first charity mission to this planet, after all. It would be best to leave a good impression.

He found Zoya in the main sitting room of the ship. As usual, she was scowling at him.

"Since you're clearly invested in going through with this mercy mission," she said, nose wrinkled in faint distaste, "you're going to have to tell me more about the people trying to assassinate you."

" _I_ thought you already knew everything you needed," Nikolai replied, tone forcible light and airy. He knew he was only irritating her more, but he couldn't say that wasn't the point of the endeavour, either. "Someone's trying to kill me. You need to stop them."

"Do you _ever_ think?" Zoya asked him, getting even angrier than he'd anticipated. "If I don't know anything about the threat, how am I to protect you? Why do they want to kill you?"

He smiled sweetly. "I think you've worked that out for yourself, Master Jedi."

She ignored him. "What resources do they have at their disposal? How have they tried to kill you in the past, and how likely is it that they'll use those methods again?"

He thought for a moment. "Well, there was the poison in the food," he said, "but my dear friend Tamar can smell a single gram of any poison from a mile away and saved my life. Then someone tried to seduce me and stab me while I was naked, but she'd had a little too much to drink and her aim was wildly off. And finally, there were the revolting kouhuns which were shoved through a hole in my window to poison me."

"You're making it all up," Zoya scoffed. "This is _serious_. I don't want to hear any stories about _kouhuns_ , of all things."

"That was what gave it away?" Nikolai feigned surprise. "That was the only part of it that was true."

Zoya was silent for a heartbeat - two. Then, "You pissed someone off enough that they set _kouhuns_ on you?" She threw up her hands. "Are we even talking about the same animal?"

"Small, bug-like, hard black carapace, too many legs? Deadly poisonous? Found on jungle planets?"

"We're talking about the same animal." Zoya sighed. "So your assassin has connections and resources at their disposal - and are willing to exploit those resources to their full extent to see you dead. What did you do to get into the bad books of someone so powerful?"

"I have influence with Naboo's senator," he suggested. "And Naboo is very respected in the Galactic Senate. They might be worried that I'll sway Keramsov's vote, and he'll sway the rest."

"When did the assassinations start? What bill was put before the Senate just before they did?"

Nikolai thought for a moment, throwing his mind back. It had been the one proposed by one of the senators from the Outer Rim, he remembered. Lah'mu. They'd wanted to-

He swallowed. Glanced at Zoya.

"The assassinations began," he said slowly, not meeting Zoya's eyes, "shortly after the bill to curb the authority of the Jedi was put forward."

Her scowl immediately dropped, to be replaced by a very guarded expression. "I see," she said, voice equally neutral. "And which way were you hoping to sway Senator Keramsov?"

He was sure his answer was evident by the hesitation he had to answer. "We were planning on voting in favour of it."

Zoya pursed her lips. "I see," she repeated. "Do you know of anyone who would severely disagree with you on that?"

He didn't answer - just looked at her for a long moment.

As expected, she took offence right away. " _I_ am not trying to kill you!" she spluttered. "Nor are _any_ of the Jedi! We are keepers of the peace, not warriors, and _certainly_ not assassins. Why in the galaxy-"

"As much as I've heard that's true, Master Jedi," Nikolai said quietly. "You can't deny that it seems odd that an order whose influence I am actively trying to reduce would decide to use that influence to keep me alive - even send in one of their own to 'protect me'. It's the perfect opportunity."

"I am a _Jedi_ ," Zoya spat, as if it would mean any more this time round that it did the first. "I will not _murder_ a person under my charge! Do you trust _anyone_?"

Nikolai did. He trusted Tamar; he trusted Tolya. He knew they weren't infallible, but he trusted their loyalty to the people they loved above all else.

He just didn't trust ideals. He didn't trust ideals, or governments, or large orders. And seeing as Zoya was the representative of one of those, he didn't trust her.

"I trust _people_ ," he said. "And I trust the senator from Lah'mu when she says that there is something fundamentally flawed within the Jedi Order. Until that flaw is fixed, I believe the Jedi shouldn't be allowed such an influential role in our government. That our government itself is flawed just for having it that way."

Zoya didn't seem to have listened to his impassioned speech. Instead, her brows were furrowed, eyes narrow. "Lah'mu. . ." She cursed. "I should've known Aditi was behind this mess."

"The senator from Lah'mu's name is-"

"Aditi Hilli is not a senator," Zoya snapped. "She was a Jedi. She left the Order six months ago."

"And?" Nikolai asked, the gears in his head turning. "Why?"

Zoya shrugged, her lips twisted into a bitter smile. "Who knows? Before she left she kept harping on about how the Jedi were unhealthy, taught some toxic form of masculinity, and would ultimately lead to years of emotional scarring. The healers wrote her off as being shell-shocked." Nikolai almost flinched at the casual - _dismissive_ \- way she said that. "After all, she was only nineteen, newly apprenticed to a master, and on her first mission she had to quell a riot. People died. She was never the same after that."

"Did you know her?" Nikolai found himself asking.

"Yes."

Silence hung in the air for a moment, then, but he had too many questions to let it hang there for long. "What do she have to do with Lah'mu?"

"It's where she moved after she left," Zoya said sourly. "She'd always been close friends with the senator, and she was looking for a peaceful life so she moved to that world and started working on a farm." She scoffed. "Farming! A woman of her talents?"

It was only years of diplomacy that allowed Nikolai to bite back his scathing remark.

"Anyway, clearly she kept spouting her nonsense while she was there, and now the senator is trying to do something about it." Zoya's tone only grew more disgusted, and Nikolai realised with a jolt why that was. Zoya had known Aditi Hilli - been close to her. She missed her. "She always was ridiculous."

One could even say, she'd been attached to her.

"Isn't attachment forbidden, Master Jedi?"

All the earlier glares combined could not have rivalled the one Zoya shot him then. "It's a good thing I'm not attached then, isn't it?" she bit back, before rather aggressively getting to her feet. "Come on. We've probably have landed by now." She shot him a sweet smile. "And I would _hate_ for you to miss a _single moment_ of your mercy mission."


	2. Episode II

Niima Outpost was as crowded as it ever was, with scavengers of all skills and species thronging the place in the hopes of getting some sort of charity donation. For Mal, it was no problem - he barely had to move and the crowd parted for him.

For Alina, it was slightly different.

She winced as yet another person elbowed her in the ribs. She was starting to feel light-headed now; the sun was high in the sky, and she'd drunk the last of her water on the trip here. She hoped water would be something she was able to pick up.

The ships had landed already, and it was only the presence of the guards the diplomat had brought with them that prevented the assembled scavengers from ganging up and overrunning it. As it was, they were forced to form a perimeter as the tables were set up to distribute the supplies, with the guards strutting around the place. Odd, Alina observed: the guards in question wore pale brown overalls with darker brown jackets - a far cry from the calm blue of Alderaan's Royal Guard, or Chandrila's troopers.

"You've seen it as well, then," Mal murmured next to her. "This is a new government who's come to make themselves look better."

"Food is food," she reminded him, a touch of warning in her voice: it would do no one any good if he refused to take it.

"I know," he said. "But hey, think you can identify that ship model?"

It was a game they liked to play. After Alina had spent eight months gathering the parts for and reassembling a flight simulator just because she'd been curious to see what flying was like, Mal had begun to jokingly ask if she knew every starship model in existence - there had been _a lot_ of ship models to practice flying with on there.

And Alina had learned to fly them all.

So she studied the ship that was the obvious head of the convoy. Sleek and silver, vaguely arrow-shaped, with two elliptical engines on either side, where the base of the arrowhead would be. . . "It's a J-type 327 Nubian starship," she said. "Probably modified in some way to become more durable; that's a pleasure ship, and it wouldn't be able to hold up to environments like Jakku without some serious modifications."

Mal's mouth tugged to the side. "Could you fly it?"

"Is that even a question?"

"Right," he smirked, "I forgot. You can fly anything."

She felt her cheeks grow warm, and for the first time in her life, hoped it was sunburn and not what she thought it was. "Well, not _anything_ -"

"Scavengers!" a voice boomed out. One of the guards had stopped pacing, and was now shouting at the top of his lungs. "The tables have been set up. Please form an orderly queue and-"

He didn't get the chance to finish. Streams of people had already flooded forwards, almost knocking him off the pedestal he'd had to stand on to be heard.

Mal smirked at Alina again, but it was a tense one. "How many people do you think will be crushed to death in their desperation, today?"

"A hundred, at least."

"I'd say two hundred."

They looked at each other for a moment, then Alina sighed. "This'll be a joy."

* * *

"Sunset," Alina murmured. "We'll need to be heading back."

Mal cast her a look. "Why? They haven't stopped giving out supplies."

"We've already got plenty," she insisted. "At least, enough to survive off of until tomorrow. But you know as well as I do that we don't want to be caught out in the desert after nightfall. The gnaw-jaws'll get us. Or the ripper-raptors."

Her companion just scoffed, but as she moved towards the speeder, he followed. "Kelvin Ravine is hardly dangerous. If the Church of the Force idiots can survive in the canyon, we can too."

"Mal, Kelvin Ravine's just on the way. We still have to get across the Sinking Fields to get to the Graveyard after that."

"And?"

" _And_ ," she snapped, reaching her speeder and pulling herself onto it, "I don't want to be eaten alive by gnaw-jaws!"

Mal scoffed - _again_. She tried to ignore the sting of tears in her eyes as she checked that the supplies were securely lashed to the side of the speeder. "Gnaw-jaws only eat you if you're weak or injured or asleep, and only if you're in the open desert. We'll be fine."

"Mal. . ." The sun had fully dipped below the horizon now; Alina shivered in the sudden cold. "Let's just go. Please. I have a bad feeling about this." She did. It was a constant nagging that _she needed to leave._ Something wasn't right. "We need to get back."

"Come _on_ , Alina." He took her hand and tugged; reluctantly, she let him pull her off the speeder. "I want to show you something first."

"What?"

He just smiled at her, and walked off. She sighed, but her curiosity outweighed her fear, so she followed.

After all, she trusted Mal.

He let her through one of the stalls they and various other scavengers used to scrub off the spare parts before they sold them, and then round under a canopy and through another stall. Under another canopy again, into a tent, then he stopped and began rooting through one of the large crates of stuff there.

He was on the ground for maybe a moment. Then he was up again, and her eyes widened at what she saw in his hands. "Is that. . ."

Instead of answering aloud, Mal opened the metal cube in his hands to reveal a crude figurine inside it wearing a scavenger's robes. He twisted the scrap of metal on the side that served as a key, then the scavenger began to spin and a song began to play, a quiet lullaby Ana Kuya would sing to the newest, youngest scavengers on occasion.

Alina took it with shaking hands. "Mal," she breathed, looking at everything, from the poor rendition of herself to the fine, beautifully put together mechanics of the music box. "Where did you get all these parts? How did you-"

"Ships are your specialty; music boxes are mine," he joked, then said quietly, "Most of the parts were easy to get, or to be adapted. The comb and the cylinder were the hardest." He paused, then said, "It's yours."

Her fingers curled tightly around it. She knew what it meant on Jakku when someone built you a music box. "Mal, I-" Her words stuck in her throat. " _Thank you_."

He smiled at her; she smiled back.

That was when the roof collapsed inwards.

* * *

They hadn't even stopped distributing goods by the time sunset rolled around, and Nikolai had stopped smiling long since then. His face hurt like hell, and it wasn't like the scavengers were smiling back.

Zoya hadn't bothered smiling at all. If anything, she frowned harder when she looked over at him beginning to pack away the table, even as one of the guards told the remaining scavengers that there were no supplies left to give.

 _Until tomorrow_ , Nikolai thought, but didn't say aloud. They were told it was necessary to stop - nighttime was dangerous on Jakku - and they didn't want desperate scavengers trying to break into the ships at night.

"You look charitable," he commented to Zoya as they packed up the last of the boxes.

She scowled at him briefly for the jab, then went back to frowning around at the landscape. She looked distinctly uneasy. "I've got a bad feeling about this," she muttered, so quietly that Nikolai wasn't sure he was supposed to hear it at all.

"Well, Master Jedi," he said in an attempt at an offhand voice as he strolled up the boarding ramp to his yacht, "I'll be safe and snug in my chambers, no need to worry about me. Then we can resume tomorrow."

Zoya didn't bother walking: she just straight up jumped onto the top of the ramp, and ducked inside before him. "Forgive me for being cautious, Your Highness," she drawled, "but my mandate is to _protect_ you." The slight stress she put on the word warned him that she hadn't quite forgotten his accusation from earlier: _I'm not the one trying to kill you._

"Glad to know," he said stiffly. If he was being honest, he didn't believe Zoya was trying to kill him. If she was, she'd be trying to gain his trust, and wouldn't have taken such. . . offence. . . at the implication. But he still didn't trust her. "Nevertheless, I'd prefer if you _didn't_ try to follow me into my room or watch over me while I sleep. Frankly, that comes off as a little creepy, although I know I have a magnificent visage."

He hadn't realised Zoya could scowl any harder than she had been earlier, but she was constantly finding ways to prove him wrong. "I- I'm not-" she spluttered. "I am a _Jedi_."

 _I have no attachments - romantic, sexual, or otherwise._

Nikolai just grinned at her, and she turned away in disgust.

Suddenly tired, he turned back to his own room and ducked into the door. He didn't bother turning the light on - he knew where everything was - before flopping onto his bed, the sheets coming up to meet him. The tension drained out of his shoulders; he breathed deeply, letting his eyes drift shut, listening to his breath rasping in and out through his lungs. . .

Wait.

He held his breath for a moment, but the sound of rasping continued.

There was someone else in here.

Nikolai was a politician, and the Prince of Theed. Not only that, but he'd survived three assassination attempts already. He was rolling to the side and screaming before his assassin even took a step towards him, lifting his head at the familiar _snap-hiss_ of a lightsaber.

No.

It couldn't be Zoya.

Despite his teasing, he'd _known_ it wasn't Zoya, and besides, he'd just left Zoya in the main bay, it couldn't possibly be her-

He looked up at his attacker, and his heart stopped.

All her saw was red.

* * *

There was a queasiness in Zoya's stomach. It had started sometime before sunset, when she'd spotted a Zabrak male lurking a little too close to the yacht, and by now it was a constant ache that built up in her chest, her neck. Her head was pounding to the rhythm of her heart, the Force all but screaming at her: _something is about to happen something is about to happen SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO-_

Then the Force wasn't the only thing screaming.

She'd only heard Lantsov speak in his cultured, middle-class Mid Rim accent before, one that made everything he said, no matter how cruel the joke, gentle and amusing.

His scream, on the other hand, was bloodcurdling.

She ran.

The door hissed and slid open as she charged at it; her lightsaber was already lit in her hand when she leaped through, landing between Lantsov and the assassin, the crash of saber-on-saber loud in her ears.

Her assailant pressed harder; she backed up a little, and felt the back of her knees hit the bed.

"Lantsov, move!" she barked, and didn't give him a chance to reply before she dropped her saber, spun away to the side, and let the assassin's weight carry him forwards onto the bedsheets.

His lightsaber scorched through the sheets; Zoya wrinkled her nose at the scent of burning, but ultimately ignored it. Lantsov had moved to the side so that she was once again between him and his attacker, and the assassin - a Sith? A Dark Jedi? - had already scrambled to his feet, teeth bared in a snarl. It was difficult to make out in the dim light, but it was certainly a Zabrak, and it was probably one of the Nightbrothers from Dathomir; she recognised the tribal tattoos, the crimson skin, the horns growing out of his head like the spikes of a crown.

She lifted her lightsaber higher.

But the Zabrak didn't attack. Instead, with a flurry of motion and an overly dramatic twirl, he leaped from the bed to the door, cutting down two of the Royal Guards who'd run to help their leader and shoving past the rest.

Zoya didn't hesitate. "Help him!" she snapped at the guards who filed in, gesturing to Lantsov on the floor, then she gave chase.

Jakku's desert at night was pitch dark and cold, the only light to be seen available from the nearby outpost. Usually, it would have hampered her pursuit - but then again, _usually_ she was not dealing with imbeciles. The Zabrak had left his lightsaber on as he ran.

Better for fighting on short notice, should she catch up with him suddenly, but it meant she _could_ catch up with him suddenly, because he stuck out among the darkness like a sore thumb. His lightsaber - now, without the close quarters and confusion blinding her, Zoya could make out that it was double-bladed, with a single long hilt and the two lasers coming out of each side of it - illuminated everything. All of it, the shifting sands, his flapping clothes, the movement of his legs, was bathed in bloody light.

 _Fool._

She gave chase.

The wind tugged at her hair as she ran; she regretted not tying it up, but it didn't matter now. This felt _good_ , finally having a purpose again, up against an enemy she could defeat, and a Sith, no less! Baghra would finally realise she was worthy of being a Jedi Knight - perhaps even a Jedi Master - and then all the scorn would stop.

All the scorn, all the judgement, would stop.

The Sith she was chasing veered towards the outpost, and the small clump of tents towards its edge. She pressed the chase, mind racing. The Sith were supposed to be extinct, although that was obviously not the case, so why would their priority be killing a politician? Why would they not spend their time on their true enemies, the Jedi?

Why would they target a politician trying to _curb_ the powers of the Jedi, instead?

She was gaining on him now. His grasp of the Force was mediocre, inferior to hers, and he couldn't keep this up for long. She could feel his anger, his hatred - and his fear. That he was afraid, though, seemed to make him all the more angry.

He glanced over his shoulder at her; his eyes widened. She imagined what she might look like to him: a beautiful women lit by the ice blue of her saber, an angel of righteousness come to exact justice on assassins and killers.

She liked the image.

His head turned forwards again, and he ran faster. She ran faster in pursuit, then stopped in shock as he drew on the Dark Side, took a deep breath, and _leaped_.

There was a row of tents in front of him, and another row behind that. Using the Force, a well-trained Jedi like Zoya could have made the jump and landed on the other side, getting away unscathed.

The Sith couldn't.

Instead, he fell onto the roof of the second tent. There were screams as it collapsed underneath him and Zoya, leaping after him, saw that he'd managed to get himself tangled in the cloth.

Idiot.

She landed nimbly next to the fallen tent, rolling to absorb the shock, then got to her feet, lightsaber in hand.

The Sith Apprentice - because this _had_ to be an apprentice, there was no way a Master could be so poorly trained and flat out stupid - seemed to be out cold, his massive form silhouetted by the canopy that had billowed on top of him. But someone was moving under the cloth, someone much smaller, and-

Human.

A human scavenger barely younger than Zoya grunted as she pushed herself out of the mess, dragging someone with her. Her limp, uneven brown hair stuck to her forehead despite the cold night as she huffed and panted, the two long knives sheathed on her back bouncing together, before she managed to drag another human boy out from the wreckage, He seemed to be out cold. The girl grunted one last time, then dropped him once they were free, removing the square metal box that had been under her arm.

But none of this is what Zoya noticed about her first.

No. What Zoya noticed first was the way the Force moved around her.

It was blinding. Brilliant. Like looking at a star and seeing a supernova instead. There was so much sheer _potential_ in her slight frame that Zoya could hardly believe it could all be contained by her skin and bones.

She needed to report this to the Council.

She needed to _bring her_ to the Council, because despite the fact that she was nearly two decades above the age Jedi started training, this young woman _had_ to be trained.

It would be an offence to leave her without it.

 _Especially_ since, if she left her here, the Sith Apprentice or his Master might find her, and train her. . .

Furthermore, how would Zoya be regarded, if she found and brought such a treasure into the Jedi Order? Baghra would _have_ to treat her with at least a little respect, then.

The scavenger had noticed Zoya's attention by now. She half-turned towards her, a hand coming up to push the hair out of her face, but she didn't say anything.

Zoya found her mouth moving before she even thought, taking a step closer to her. "What's your name?"

The girl blinked once. Twice. Then it clicked, and she answered, in vaguely accented Basic, "Alina Starkiller."

* * *

The woman was still staring at her. Alina fidgeted where she stood, taking in the woman's robes, her fancy Core accent. . .and the lightsaber at her hip.

"You're a Jedi," Alina said aloud, first in Huttese, the language usually used between scavengers, then again in Basic. Then, because a part of her had always thought they were just rumours, she asked, "The Jedi are real?"

The woman's mouth curled into a slight sneer at the question, but she was still looking at Alina like Mal looked at a pile of ration packs. "Of course we're real. We're central to the Republic, a key part of the government."

Alina shrugged. "The Republic doesn't exist out here."

"You're in the _Inner Rim_. You're closer to Coruscant than _Naboo_."

She shrugged again. "Where's all your influence, then? We have to survive on our own." There was a pause as the woman's sneer got even worse, and Alina worried she'd disgusted her, or repulsed her. So she asked, if only because the Jedi was turning away and she had _so many questions_ , "What's your name?"

The Jedi glanced at her for a moment, like she was debating her worth, whether she deserved to know, then said, "Zoya Nazyalensky."

Alina pressed her lips together. "And. . . you _are_ a Jedi?"

"Yes!"

"Then what are you doing here?" A thought hit her: Weren't the Jedi supposed to represent all that was good in the galaxy? All that was selfless and kind and _helpful_? "Did you come here to help us?"

The sneer on Zoya's face didn't seem to have lessened, but she struggled for a moment, conflicted.

". . . yes," she said finally. "I came with the charity delegation."

Alina couldn't help it: her face broke into a smile. "So you _are_ here to help!"

The Jedi was looking more and more uncomfortable by the minute, glancing from Alina, to the fancy ship that had brought the supplies, to the Zabrak man who'd crashed through the tent and interrupted her and Mal.

Alina turned to look as well, and, in the dim light, could barely make out what he looked like. She turned back to Zoya. "So. . . why are you here? By the tents, I mean."

Zoya lifted her chin. "I was chasing _him_ ," she jerked her head towards the Zabrak, "and he ran here. He's a Sith, and ancient enemy of the Jedi."

"Oh."

"You should step away from him," Zoya advised. "He'd likely do anything to get his hands on you. To train you."

Alina glanced at the man's body, but didn't move. "Why? I'm nothing special."

When she looked back at Zoya, the woman's mouth was half-open, like she was about to say something, but was too confused to know what. "You- you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Yes, _Jedi_ ," hissed a voice behind them. Alina jumped out of her skin and turned to see the Zabrak very much awake, very much alive - and staring at her.

His eyes, a sickly yellow, seemed to glow in the minimal light.

His gaze flicked to Zoya as he got to his feet, and the double-bladed laser sword he seemed to carry. Zoya lit hers as well, and Alina found herself comparing the differences in colour between Zoya's icy blue, and the Sith's bloody red.

His eyes flicked back to Alina, then to Zoya. "What doesn't the brat know?"

Instead of answering, Zoya shifted into some sort of fighting posture, though whether it was a form for offence or defence Alina couldn't tell. The Zabrak shifted into a fighting stance as well. When they locked gazes, she knew one thing with utmost certainty:

Someone was going to die tonight.

Someone was going to die tonight, and Alina was afraid.

The fear had been with her all evening, the reason she'd wanted to get back to shelter so badly before Mal had convinced her otherwise, a persistent ache in her torso that something wasn't right. It felt a little like her monthly cycles, except more. . . unreal.

Now, though, it swelled to far, far worse than the pain from the monthly cycles ever got - and that was saying something. It roiled in her stomach, heaved the few rations she'd consumed around her intestines, pounded in her head. The pounding built and built as the Force users circled each other, predatory, watching, until Alina - couldn't - take it-

She imagined her fear rushing out of her, all in one wave, and that's what it did. A sudden wind picked up amongst the wreckage, except it wasn't a wind because there was no breeze tonight so that shock wave had come from _her_ , she was the origin of the mysterious force that blew waves in the sand, ruffled Zoya's robes, pushed the Sith back a step.

He turned his attention onto her. "Oh," he observed. "Now that _is_ interesting."

She tried to take a deep breath, but the fear was building again. It was building, and building, and she was suddenly, _irrationally_ , afraid of what was going to happen next-

Zoya charged.

The Sith whipped his attention back to her and brought up his lightsaber just in time to parry, parry, _strike_. The blow was too powerful for Zoya, who lost her footing and stumbled back slightly, unbalanced. She was about to recover herself when the Sith threw out his hand and a pulse (of the Force?) sent her flying backwards, colliding with one of the tents across from them, and tumbling to the ground.

The Zabrak turned back to Alina.

She remained rooted to the spot. Something about his yellow eyes was magnetic - there was a pull to the way he felt, the aura he projected. It was dark and callous and cruel, but it was familiar. It was a brutality and desperation born of anger and fear and hatred. It was exactly what she had to be to survive.

There was a piece of it inside her, and it called out to her.

Then the Sith took a step towards her and she panicked.

She didn't know what was going on. She didn't know _anything_ about this, except that Zoya and the Sith were at odds, and if it came down to it. . . she wanted Zoya to win this fight. She had no reason to, no logic behind it - but she'd had no logic to wanting to leave earlier. This was a feeling she had, though whether it was a good or bad feeling depended on your point of view.

So she knew one thing: she did not want this Sith to come near her.

She took a step back.

"Don't be afraid, child," the Sith said. There was a strange burr to his voice, like he was trying to be gentle, but couldn't quite remember how. "I won't hurt you, I promise."

He was telling the truth - at least, partly. _He_ himself wouldn't hurt her - whatever was so "interesting" about her ensured that - but nevertheless, if she went with him. . . There would be pain. Lots of it.

She took another step back.

"I said, don't be so afraid, child," the Sith insisted, his impatience wearing his voice thin and snappish. She shook her head. "I can _feel_ your fear."

Really? she wondered. Because _she_ couldn't. It was like she was suddenly cut off from it. She could still see it, touch it, but it. . . wasn't real. And in its place was something clear and crystalline, bright and clean.

She dipped her fingers into it and felt it flow through her, like the forgiving cool breeze on a hot day. The Sith's eyes went wide.

"Stop that," he said sternly.

But she couldn't. This power - because it was a _power_ she had, she realised - was intoxicating, sweet, and _cool_. It felt like the heat she'd been dealing with forever, too much sun, too many feelings trapped in one small body, had been dissolved, her sense of self swept away from her corporeal body and into something. . .

. . . _bigger._

 _"Stop that!"_ the Sith shouted, but she hadn't been listening before, and she wasn't now, even as she lifted one of her hands, entranced by it all, and the cloths and struts lying on top of Zoya, crushing her, began to lift of their own accord, leaving her there unobstructed.

A sudden _snap-hiss_ jerked her out of the trance. The hum of the red lightsaber was loud in her ears as the Sith charged at her, and she panicked. Let go of that power. Stepped back.

It was like being plunged in a sensory deprivation tank. Her now-solid feet were clumsy and mortal; she stumbled backwards more than stepped, watching the red lightsaber swing towards her with the dull realisation that everything was moving a lot faster than it had a few moments ago.

That, or she was moving much slower.

But the daze only lasted so long, and Alina hadn't survived so many years on Jakku without having good instincts. It was those instincts that had her reaching for the knives she had sheathed over her back and swinging them to meet the lightsaber, terror clogging her throat-

The lightsaber sheared right through them. Half of the blades fell to the sand, the edge of the metal glowing red-hot in the darkness.

She looked back up at the Sith with wide eyes. "No, please-"

He swung at her again. She staggered back.

"No!"

She tripped over her feet and went sprawling, the sand cushioning her fall somewhat. He was still approaching her, and in her panic she reached out again, terrified, willing to do anything, _be anyone_ , if only to regain that sense of clarity and purpose she'd touched before-

The power rushed back into her. It was muddied by her fear, more bitter than sweet, but she grasped hold of it with both hands and _pulled_ , so when the Sith bore down on her all she could do was throw her hands out and squeeze her eyes shut and _hope_ -

All she could hear was the humming of the lightsaber. The sands drifted in the breeze, tickling her exposed skin, but her muscles remained locked and rigid.

Hardly daring to breathe, she opened her eyes.

The Sith was frozen in place. The muscles in his arms bulged, the strain on his face palpable, but he genuinely couldn't move.

Alina looked down at her hands, breathing heavily.

Had- had she done that?

Why?

What?

 _How?_

She looked up at the Sith again, then down at his lightsaber.

Now she was connected to that. . . power - _the Force?_ \- she could. . . feel something. From the lightsaber. At first it was just a subtle vibration in her heart and bones, then she paid attention to it and there was a melody to it as well.

And it was coming from that lightsaber.

Gently, hardly daring to breathe, she touched the saber. Felt the ridges and nooks of the hilt in her hands. Then, like she was dissecting any piece of scrap junk, she reached for that energy field and _pulled_ at the cracks, the seams. Pulled, and watched the individual pieces float into the air around her.

She peered through the cloud of metal, idly identifying a handful - _oh, there's an emitter matrix_ \- but she didn't know what she was looking for. Didn't know, until-

 _There_.

The song was louder now, both dark and light, and it only grew stronger as she reached for the two silvery-red crystals that hung suspended in the air. She felt their song turn to one of despair as they hung there, and thought of the emotions the Sith had felt.

She reached out, and closed her hand around the crystals.

They lay in her palm, and she found herself automatically trying to. . . reassure them, like a mother might her children. Her other hand came up to stroke them, and she sort of. . . projected. . . positive feelings, happiness, peace, towards the crystals.

After a few moments, their dark and light song grew brighter, and the despair was dispelled completely.

She closed her hand again, and looked up at the Sith. His face had grown angrier and angrier as she did all this, but he was still frozen. And she could feel it, feel the toll this ongoing act of power was having on her, feel the ache in her chest, the pounding in her head.

She let go.

He collapsed to the floor with a thump. She scrambled back, even as he pushed himself up and met her eye. She'd never seen anyone so angry, but neither had she ever seen someone so. . . _awed_. Especially when looking at her.

His eyes fell on the hand holding the crystals, and his face contorted further. "You-"

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. There was a sudden _snap-hiss_ , then a bright beam of light ejected from his chest. His eyes blew wide, then he _slumped_ , backwards, then was shrugged sideways onto the ground like some irrelevant piece of junk.

Zoya stop behind him, staring down at her. Her gaze was slightly unfocused, but she was frowning, squinting at the crystals in her hand, then at the body cooling on the floor.

All she said was, "This is bigger than I thought it would be."


	3. Episode III

**Posting this slightly early, because I won't have access to wifi for at least a week. Nor will I have access to wifi next Friday, so there won't be any update then, although I hope I'll be able to post the week after.**

* * *

"Will Mal be alright?"

Zoya wanted to scoff at the question, but she supposed the fact that after everything that had just happened to Alina, the fact that the girl's first reaction was to tuck her newly found kyber crystals amongst the folds of her attire and scramble to check on her friend was a compliment to her character.

Nevertheless, that didn't mean Zoya bothered to give him more than a preliminary probe with the Force before she said, "Yes. He'll be fine. You, on the other hand, have some explaining to do."

The girl's head jerked up, blush consuming her cheeks. Zoya had to squint to make it out; they really should get back to the ship if they were going to have this conversation, where there was light and they could actually see each other.

"About what?" she asked nervously, biting her bottom lip.

Zoya just fixed her with a look, disappointed that Alina wouldn't be able to appreciate its full power, since she couldn't actually see it in the dark. "You just survived an encounter with a Sith Lord by using the Force to freeze him in his place and purify his kyber crystals, and you think I'm not going to comment on that?" She let her surprise and scorn bleed through her tone, and was only half surprised to see Alina flinch slightly. "Who's been training you?"

Alina shook her head. "No one," she insisted. "I didn't know what I was doing at the time - I've never done that before!"

Zoya paused. Through the Force, she felt sincere, but if she _had_ been trained, she would have been taught to shield herself first and foremost. Herself, her true intentions, and her Force sensitivity. Why those shields had fallen when Zoya first met her was anyone's guess, but it was the only feasible reason that Alina hadn't been found by the Jedi as a child, and taken to be trained.

After all, there was no way that such strength in the Force could thrive in the Inner Rim, so close to the Core Worlds, and not come to their attention. The Jedi were by no means all seeing, but they weren't blind.

Zoya began. "That may be true-"

"It _is_ true!"

"-but the fact remains that you took out a Sith Lord - one whom _I_ , a fully trained and talented Jedi Knight, failed to defeat - without any training."

"It was your arrogance that lost you that battle," Alina said quietly. "You could've beat him, but you underestimated him. He took you by surprise with that sudden strike."

Zoya bristled, but found she couldn't argue. Alina was right.

It just irritated her further. "We should continue this conversation inside," she snapped, "but the bottom line is this: You have to come to Coruscant with me. The Jedi Council need to meet you."

"You mean. . ." Not for the first time since meeting her, Alina looked thoroughly confused - and maybe a little awed as well. "Leave Jakku? Go into space?" Her voice got more excited. "On an actual ship?"

Zoya nodded curtly, then made to walk back to the ship a little way away, visible through the gloom. "Are you coming?" she asked.

Alina nodded, then hesitated. "Wait."

Zoya just raised one irritated eyebrow as the girl glanced from her, to the ship, then down, at her friend.

"What about Mal?"

* * *

In the end, Alina managed to convince Zoya to help her carry Mal onto the ship, where a man a little older than them took one look at him, at the worry on her face and the irritation on Zoya's, and demanded that the shipboard medic treat her friend.

Alina decided she liked this man.

Even if he confused her when he offered her his hand with an ostentatious bow. "I am the Prince of Theed, Nikolai Lantsov, though please, call me Nikolai."

She hesitantly took his hand, and shook it. That was what you were supposed to do, right? There wasn't much cause for hand-shaking on Jakku. "Alina Starkiller," she said, a little breathlessly, dropping her hand back to her side.

His eyebrow climbed behind his hairline. "A very dramatic name. Have you killed any stars in your lifetime?"

"Shut up, Lantsov, and sit down," Zoya said, taking her seat herself around the table in the main living quarters of the ship. "Our trip back to Naboo's been cancelled. We need to go to Coruscant."

"Cancelled?" Nikolai's eyebrows shot up. "By whom? You?"

"Me," Zoya said confidently, a sweet smile curving her lips. "After all, Your Highness, not only do I need to introduce Alina here to the Jedi Council _and_ report the first appearance of a Sith Lord in over a thousand years, but I've just heard that your dear friend Keramsov has relocated to Coruscant in order to be on hand when the Senate votes on the bill about the powers of the Jedi. I'm _sure_ you're _dying_ to talk to him."

Nikolai pressed his lips tightly together, but conceded the point. Alina genuinely didn't know what to make of this conversation. What major conflict here was she missing?

"Very well," Nikolai said. "After we finish distributing goods tomorrow, I suppose we're heading to Coruscant."

"We head there now."

Alina froze. Nikolai just glared.

"We came here as a charity delegation, we are obliged to finish distributing the supplies we brought for them."

"This is more important, Your Highness," Zoya insisted, gaze flicking to Alina then back to him. "The situation has changed."

"How?" Alina meant it to come out as a polite inquiry - she was being taken away from Jakku because of Zoya, and she didn't want to alienate the woman - but it came out broken. Her voice was half-choked by tears. "How has the situation changed? We still need supplies now just as much as we did yesterday."

"Agreed," Nikolai cut in, before Zoya could give voice to the angry glare Zoya was shooting Alina. "We have a mission to fulfil, and we shall fulfil it."

Zoya stood up from the table, back straight and poised. "Even if it interferes with the parameters of _my_ mission?"

Nikolai didn't bother standing to oppose her - he didn't need to. He just tilted his head up and said coolly, "Yes."

She gave a bitter smile. "As you wish, Your Highness," she said, then marched out of the room. Alina was left stewing in the awkward silence that followed.

Nikolai sighed. "Honestly," he said, "one would've thought she had enough taste to not make a pun about me _dying_ so soon after an assassin attempted to kill me. That was just rude."

Alina didn't say anything.

He turned to look at her. "You're not very talkative, are you?"

She met his gaze. "I'm a scavenger. _I have no idea what's going on_."

"Ah." Nikolai lay back in his chair. "That would explain it. Well, to put it simply, I was just nearly assassinated."

Alina took a deep breath at the casual way he said that. These people were. . . odd. "Okay."

"It's the fourth attempt on my life in the last year or so," he continued, "and the lovely Zoya was assigned as my Jedi protector to defend me from said assassins. She ran off a little while ago chasing after the assassin who made an attempt on my life, only to return with you. To be frank, that's all I know about the matter, too." He sat forward, curiosity in his eyes. "I don't suppose you could deduce why Zoya thinks you need to meet the Jedi Council?"

"I. . ." She swallowed. "I don't know."

"But you have your suspicions." It wasn't a question.

". . .yes." She bit her lip and glanced at the table, where she'd knotted her fingers together. "I think I might have the Force. Also, I killed a Sith Lord."

Nikolai jerked his head up. "What? What's a Sith Lord?"

"I don't know," Alina admitted. "Zoya said they're the enemies of the Jedi, but. . . I don't know. This one was scary. Zabrak, with red skin and tribal markings."

"That was my assassin," Nikolai mused. "I wonder why someone sent a Sith Lord to kill me." Then, almost to himself. "So it _is_ to do with the Jedi. . ."

"I don't know," Alina said again. "I didn't technically kill him. I just. . . froze him in place. Zoya was the one who stabbed him."

"I see." Nikolai frowned, glancing towards a door that led off the main hold. "And your friend?"

 _Mal_. For a moment, she felt guilty for not sparing him a thought until now. "A tent fell on him."

"Ah."

Another uncomfortable silence fell.

Nikolai didn't seem to like the silence - or, maybe, he just really liked his own voice. "Well, so long as Master Nazyalensky is being so secretive about everything. . ." He gestured towards the table with one hand, and pulled a sheath of hexagonal cards out of the folds of his cloak with the other. "Do you know how to play sabacc?"

Alina took them hesitantly. "Yes." She may not technically be a criminal herself, but she'd run into a lot of them. And sabacc was a favourite among criminals - smugglers in particular.

However, it wasn't usually-

"I know a prince usually isn't meant to know these things," Nikolai confided in a joking tone as he dealt out the cards, "but I make it my business to know as many sources of fun as possible. Now," he picked up his own cards, "would you care you begin?"

* * *

Sure enough, the charity delegation remained there the next day, but Zoya's new habit of marching around intimidating all the Royal Guards meant that supplies were handed out much faster than the previous day, and they were packing up by the time high noon rolled around.

Mal had also been completely treated for his concussion by the time high noon rolled around. Alina wasn't sure whether to be thankful for that or not; on the one hand, it would've given her an excuse to maybe request he was brought with them to Coruscant so he could finish with the healing, but on the other, she was fairly sure Zoya would've kicked him off the ship regardless of his physical condition.

But it didn't matter what might've happened. All that mattered was that Alina was standing in the shadow of a tent, here and now, clutching his hands, saying goodbye to him.

"You're _leaving_?" His voice was hard, disbelieving. Angry.

"I'm going to Coruscant," she confirmed. Mal's face twisted.

"I got that. Just- _why_?"

She took a deep breath, and let go of his hands so she could spread hers. "I have this. . . power," she choked on the word, "inside me." She examined her bare palms. "It's strong, and it can be dangerous, and Zoya things I need to talk to someone about it."

"The Force," he guessed. She pinched her lips together and nodded. He scoffed. "I can't believe you're falling for that shit. The Force is something out of stories. There's no way the Jedi are really all-powerful, loving people." His voice broke a little as he said, "If they were, they would've helped us before now."

"Mal, I know it's ridiculous, but. . . you weren't there. You didn't see what I did." Tears pricked her eyes at the memory as she grabbed his hands again for emphasis. "It was powerful there - it was _real_. I have the Force, and Zoya says I'm going to become a Jedi."

"'Zoya says'." Mal scoffed again. "What makes you trust her so much? She's been nothing but horrible all trip, if you haven't noticed. Why are you suddenly worshipping the ground she walks on?" She didn't say anything, but maybe she should have. Because what Mal said next was what ruined everything. "I'm sure you'll fit right in with all the suck-ups on Coruscant."

She dropped his hands like they'd burned her. "What?"

He just lifted his chin and glared. "You heard me."

"Mal." She couldn't believe what he'd said. They'd always mocked the fancy-pancy politicians who worked more for personal power than for the sake of those they represented - did he really think she'd become like that?

 _Why do you resent an opportunity for me to have a better life?_ she wanted to shout. _Are you jealous? Will you miss me? Are you angry I'm leaving you behind?_

 _If so,_ say it _. But don't be cruel._

 _We see enough cruelty as it is. . ._

But she didn't say any of that out loud.

"I'll come back and visit you," she said instead. "I promise."

He didn't say anything. Instead, he just turned around and walked away, and she imagined that the crunch of his feet moving through the sand was the crunch of her heart breaking.

* * *

Mal didn't go back to the shelter he spent the night in. He didn't think he could bear to make that trip without Alina.

Instead, he hung around Niima Outpost. Hunted through the tent that had collapsed on top of him the previous night until he found what he was looking for.

And then he sat atop a dune as he watched the charity delegation take off. He couldn't remember what model of ship Alina had said the yacht was, and he found himself wishing he could as he watched it fly away into the cerulean sky, clutched the mass of spare parts in his lap.

He sat there clutching the wreckage of the music box to his chest until long after the yacht broke atmosphere.

* * *

Space was cold.

Zoya kept trying to ignore Alina's constant shivering, but she had to admit that it reminded her of the first time she'd been on a ship, and been surprised at how naturally cold space was. And for Alina, who'd come from a desert planet. . .

Thankfully, they emerged from hyperspace fairly soon - Jakku was much closer to Coruscant than to Naboo - leaving Zoya with something to do. Even if that something was making sure Alina understood what would happen once they were down there.

So the moment she watched the mottled blue of hyperspace recede to show the planet before them, she rapped on the door to Alina's room.

"We're here," she said shortly, then beckoned with her right hand for her to come out.

"I know," Alina said as she followed, "I watched us dropping out of hyperspace. There was a window in my cabin."

Zoya pressed her lips together. "Well, come into the cockpit," she said. "The view of Coruscant will be better there."

And it was.

Alina's eyes ballooned open at the sight of it. The planet was a dark brownish-grey from the sheer number of buildings that occupied its surface, but the amber lights from those buildings lit the surface in rings and rows, the geometric shapes that dominated the planet's architecture. With half the planet lit by its sun, and the other half cast into shadow, it looked dramatic to say the least.

Dramatic, and awe-inspiring.

"Is it _all_ covered in buildings?" Alina asked, a tinge of fear colouring her voice and her Force presence. A hand drifted to her temple, where she started to rub it.

Of course. She was from the desert, with few people in close proximity, if any at all. The closer they got to Coruscant, with its population of over one trillion sentient beings, the more feelings and thoughts she'd feel through the Force, all clamouring for attention, screaming into her mind. It was enough to give anyone a headache.

Zoya needed to teach her how to shield.

"Block them out, Alina," she said. "Close your eyes, take deep breaths, and imagine you're pushing all the voices away. Imagine you're building a wall around your mind, keeping everything out. Your mind is enclosed. Nothing can get in."

"Nothing can get in," she murmured, eyes squeezed tightly shut, then she relaxed.

Zoya probed her mind gently. "Needs improvement, but it's passable for the moment." Alina let out a sigh, and nodded. "And to answer your earlier question: yes. Coruscant is an ecumenopolis."

Alina blinked. "What does that mean?"

"That it's all one big city."

The girl nodded slowly, biting her lip. "You and Nikolai talk fancy."

"I'm from the Core," Zoya said simply. "I was raised in the Jedi Temple on the planet below us, at the heart of the capital of the Republic. And Prince Lantsov may be from the Mid Rim, but he's from the upper classes on Naboo. We've had the best education there is to have. Of course we speak properly."

"And then there's me," Alina said dryly, enunciating the twang in her own accent. Jakku still spoke with the clipped tones of the Core and Inner Rim, but they were spoken like slang, without the propriety Zoya used.

But rather than say any of this, she simply opted not to say anything at all. It was unusually tactful of her, and she was sure Baghra would be proud.

"What's gonna happen now?" Alina asked quietly.

"I've sent a message ahead," Zoya said assuredly. "The Jedi know we're coming. They'll be there to meet us. Lantsov is going to be accompanied by his Royal Guards to visit his dear friend Keramsov, and we'll be escorted to the Jedi Temple. You _will_ become a Jedi."

Zoya hoped that the certainty she projected in that last sentence convinced Alina it was true, because for some reason, she couldn't quite convince herself.


	4. Episode IV

Coruscant was just as impressive on the surface as it was from above. As they stepped off the ship, onto the landing platform, Alina couldn't help but move towards the edge and glance down, at the levels below. She couldn't see the bottom.

Nikolai put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. "All the buildings on Coruscant are skyscrapers," he explained quietly. "We're at the top, in the richer parts. You don't want to visit the lower levels."

"Why?"

"They're dark," he answered. "Very, very dark. The only sunlight is up here, among the clouds. It's also dirty, and dingy, with all sorts of criminals operating in the depths. For the people who can't afford to live anywhere else, it's a poor quality of life."

"But the Jedi are right here." Alina frowned. "Shouldn't they be trying to help?"

Nikolai glanced over his shoulder, at a delegation that had just arrived at the platform. At a glance, Alina could make out a tall, dark-haired man a few years older than her, as well as an old woman, both human. All the people in the delegation wore robes like Zoya's.

Nikolai sighed. "You will find, Alina," he confided as they started walking over, "that the Jedi's primary concern nowadays is bureaucracy."

"Bureaucracy?" she asked, not having heard the word before, but he'd already slipped away, to where his Royal Guards were waiting for him to leave.

So she approached the delegation of Jedi and stood to Zoya's right, half a step back, as she spoke.

"Grandmaster Baghra," Zoya said. "This is Alina Starkiller, the girl I was telling you about."

Alina felt the old woman's black gaze fixate on her, and she tried not to fidget. Baghra had a focus about her, an intensity, that made Alina feel like she was being picked at the way scavenger crows would pick at a corpse.

In an attempt to evade the scrutiny, Alina glanced away from her, to someone else in the delegation. Her gaze settled on the young man she'd noted earlier, whose grey eyes were no less intense than Baghra's, but he didn't give her the chance to look away. He offered her a small smile, and she found herself relaxing marginally.

She flicked her gaze back to Baghra just in time to catch her turn her disapproval on Zoya. "And what about you, Nazyalensky? You're back from your mission very soon. Has the threat to the Senator's life been eliminated?"

"Not necessarily, Master Baghra," Zoya said slowly. "It's one of the two things I came to _consult_ ," Alina heard the faintest sneer in the way she said it, "your _wisdom_ on." She took a deep breath. "The assassin was a Sith Lord."

Alina still wasn't sure what a 'Sith Lord' was, exactly, but she heard the sudden muttering among the meeting party anyway. The Jedi each turned to the other, confusion stark on their faces.

Baghra alone was unchanged. "Impossible. The Sith are extinct. They haven't been sighted in over a millennium, since the founding of the Republic itself."

"Perhaps so," Zoya said, the irritation in her voice rising. "But the Zabrak I fought was definitely a Sith."

Baghra pinched her lips together, though Alina didn't know if it was because of Zoya's opposition, or the news she brought. She glanced around at the busy surroundings, the skyscrapers, then sighed. "We will continue this discussion in the council chamber," she decided, and gestured for everyone to follow.

Alina glanced at Zoya, who nodded towards the delegation, and fell into step with them. She twisted round to give a half-hearted wave to Nikolai, who waved back with a wry smile on his face, before she jogged to catch up with the others.

The grey-eyed man from earlier fell back to walk in step with her. "Hello," he said in a soft voice, like he was afraid he might scare her off. He offered her his hand as they walked. "I'm Aleksander."

She smiled at him, if only because he was the first person since Nikolai to show her a hint of friendliness. "Alina Starkiller."

"I know," he said. "So, Zoya thinks you're the Chosen One?"

She stopped where she was. "The _what_?"

He blinked. "You don't-" He cut himself off. "Of course you don't." He started walking again, and she followed suit. "Well, I won't be able to explain it as well as Mother," he admitted, "so I'll let her explain it when we get there."

She frowned. "Mother?"

He nodded towards the front, where Baghra looked to be arguing with Zoya. "Grandmaster Baghra. She's my mother."

"I thought-" _that the Jedi weren't allowed attachments_ , she nearly finished, but stopped herself in time.

Aleksander's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "You thought," he echoed.

An awkward silence fell, and Alina regretted bringing it up. She didn't want to drive away the only person who seemed interested in being her friend.

"So," Aleksander said in a forcibly light tone, "I hear you're from Jakku?"

And she smiled, as she relaxed into conversation with him again.

* * *

The chamber of the Jedi Council was located high up, in one of the towers of the Jedi Temple, and so had a spectacular view of Coruscant. Zoya couldn't deny that, as a youngling, she'd occasionally become lost in the sight of the speeders that shot past in the distance, or the way the sunlight played along the skyline.

That didn't mean she didn't find it irritating when Alina did it.

"Alina Starkiller," Baghra said pointedly, snapping the girl's focus back to the here and now. A flush swept through Alina's cheeks, but the Grandmaster didn't pause to acknowledge it. "How old are you?"

Zoya watched as Alina frowned for a moment. "Seventeen rotations on Jakku," she said slowly. "I think-"

"That's close enough to seventeen standard years for our records, thank you," Baghra said dismissively. "And either way, you're still much older than our usual Jedi initiate. Too old."

Alina frowned again, though this one was out of confusion. "I am?"

Zoya pursed her lips. Of course, she'd _known_ that Alina's age would be a problem when she'd decided to bring her here - the oldest initiate the Jedi had ever taken on was two years old - but she'd thought that the Council would have more foresight than this.

"Master Baghra," she said suddenly, stepping forwards into the circle, next to Alina. "I understand there are problems in her age and background, and that there'll be gaps in her knowledge, but. . . _surely_ you're not suggesting that we don't train her?"

Baghra cocked her eyes, dark eyes alight in challenge. Standing behind her with his eyes fixed on Alina, Aleksander tensed.

"And why," Baghra asked, "are you so adamant she be trained?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Zoya asked, looking round at everyone. "She's the Chosen One."

Everyone sat up straighter at that, except Aleksander, whose expression only became more guarded.

"The Chosen One?" Baghra scoffed, even as Alina asked the same question, in an actual questioning tone.

Zoya nodded. "Test her sensitivity. Feel her through the Force. I'm telling you, she _is_ the Chosen One. I've never felt anyone with her sort of power." She lowered her voice slightly, even though Alina could still hear her perfectly well. "And if we don't make her a Jedi, the Sith might find her." Baghra tensed at the thought. "That would be catastrophic."

Baghra's brow creased, and she glanced around at the other members of the Council, wordlessly asking what they thought. She took a deep breath, then ordered, "Aleksander, take Starkiller outside while the Master Nazyalensky further explains this matter."

Aleksander nodded, even if, from her position in front of him, Baghra couldn't see the motion. "Yes, Mother." He looked up and caught Alina's eye, giving her a crooked, slightly reassuring grin. Zoya gave a sigh of relief. At least Alina would have one friend, if she ended up staying here.

* * *

"Hey, Lightling," a voice called out the moment they were outside. Alina saw Aleksander tense his shoulders at the nickname, but he smiled at the woman who jogged round the corner and slid to a stop in front of them.

"Hi Genya," he said with a wry smile. "Have you met our new celebrity?"

It took Alina a moment to realise he was talking about her. "I'm not-"

"No, I haven't," the girl called Genya replied, eyeing her with obvious curiosity. Alina found herself caught and held by her eyes for a moment: they were a striking amber, offset well by her white skin. "I'm Genya Safin, and you are. . .?"

"Oh - I'm Alina Starkiller," she replied hesitantly.

Genya smiled. "How are you our new 'celebrity'?" she asked, putting air quotes around the word.

Alina opened her mouth, only to find that. . . "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't understand-"

"Zoya thinks she's the Chosen One," Aleksander said baldly. Genya's eyebrows shot up to hide in her auburn hair.

"The _Chosen One_?" She guffawed. "Zoya's full of shit. Always is. To be honest, I'm not surprised she'd cook up something like this."

"What _is_ the Chosen One?" Alina asked, slightly irritably. "Everyone keeps throwing around the term, and I don't-"

"Apologies, Alina," Aleksander said, waving his hand. "The Chosen One is from a prophecy no one really knows the origin of, but which has always been regarded as the height of Jedi teachings." He rolled his eyes. "It describes a Force sensitive with incredible power who will 'bring balance to the Force'." He used the air quotes again. "Not that anyone knows what that means. I mean, the Council would _like_ to believe it means destroying the Sith so they'll finally defeat their old enemy, but who knows?"

"I see," Alina said, although she really didn't.

Trying to change the subject, she asked Genya, "Are you a Jedi?"

Genya tensed up, and Alina instantly regretted her question. She didn't want to alienate the only two people in this building who'd been nice to her-

"No," she said carefully. "I have the Force, but I'm not powerful enough to be trained. I work as a cleaner, and, in this case, a messenger. It's why I'm here, actually," she said to Aleksander, "I was sent to deliver a message to your mother."

"Really?" Aleksander asked. "What was the message? Is it confidential?"

"No." Genya shook her head. "I mean, it might be, but you'll find out in a few hours yourself, anyway. It's about that bill in the Senate to curb the powers of the Jedi."

"What happened with it?"

Aleksander's voice was. . . intense. He leaned forward, eyes wide.

"Well," she said slowly, clearly just as fazed by his eagerness as Alina was, "Nikolai Lantsov and Senator Keramsov gave a speech in the Senate supporting the bill, and. . . well, people agreed."

Aleksander's mouth opened slightly. "What?"

"There's chaos," Genya said, shaking her head. "I was there just now, and. . . Everyone's shouting, every failure of the Republic's being brought up and dragged into the conversation, whether it's to do with the Jedi or not. . . It's absolute carnage. The Chancellor keeps doing his best to subdue them, but. . ."

She shook her head again, as if she couldn't believe what was happening.

"Aleksander," she said. "The shouting. . . _thousands_ of systems. . . They're talking about leaving the Republic."

* * *

Alina had heard stories - usually negative ones - about the Senate Chamber and the senators while she'd lived on Jakku, generally along the theme of _the senators sit there, high and mighty, and don't give a shit about us_. So it was unreal to step into the Grand Convocation Chamber herself and witness it.

It was shaped like a trapezoidal cone, with a smaller ring on the ground floor than on the highest level, and sloping sides full of pods that senators and guests sat in. If someone wanted to speak, they activated the repulsors on the pod and floated forwards into the centre, where everyone could see them clearly.

There were several pods hovering in the centre now, each clamouring for attention and space, while the Chancellor's podium in the centre remained the axle they all orbited. The Chancellor himself, a tall, green-skinned Rodian, was trying in vain to keep up with all the arguments, head whipping from one senator to the other.

One of his aides banged what looked like a ceremonial staff on the floor of the pod. "Order! We shall have order!"

"The Jedi are clearly an intrinsic part of the failures of this Republic!" one senator shouted.

"The Jedi are our protectors, and our saviours!" shouted another.

"Enough!" the Chancellor bellowed. The two senators who'd been quarrelling had the decency to look vaguely abashed when the holocams focused on them, and their image showed up on the screens in each pod. "Each side of the argument will be allowed to speak. Firstly, the argument for the bill. Senator Hilli of Lah'mu, would you be allowed to speak?"

"Senator _Hilli_?" Genya, next to Alina in one of the spectators' pods, murmured. "No wonder she's defending Aditi so staunchly. They must be related."

Senator Hilli's pod moved forward, but barely. "Actually, Your Excellency," the senator said, her voice loud and clear, "I've been informed that the honourable Princess Ilse from Mandalore would like to present our case."

The Chancellor nodded. "Of course. Princess?"

"There are princesses on Mandalore?" Genya muttered to Aleksander.

His reply was distracted. "Not on the planet itself, no. But there are several bodies in the Mandalore system - she's the Princess of Engelsberg, which I'm pretty sure is a moon of a moon."

"Fancy."

"My fellow senators," Ilse began. "As we have seen today, there is much bitterness over the role the Jedi play in society. If our children can feel the Force, they take them. They give us no choice, they give our children no choice, they just take them. And as a woman who has given birth several times, I cannot say that I would ever condone the action of separating a child from its family. The fact that this Republic allows them to do so is atrocious.

"So I would support Senator Hilli's proposed bill," she continued, "if I thought it would make a difference. But it won't. Because this Republic is failing."

She paused for dramatic effect. There was a silence that followed the words, as if no one could truly believe what she was saying.

"I've been hearing mutterings about it for years," the Princess said. "Among my own people, the worlds I've visited, here on Coruscant. And today I've heard mentions of it in this very chamber. This Republic _is failing_."

"You are a _member_ of this Republic!" someone shouted.

Ilse remained unfazed. "I am. And I am _horrified_ by our actions. My people have been suffering-"

"Probably because they can't stop fragging fighting each other," Genya muttered.

"-and so have the people on Coruscant. _Here_ , in the very centre of _our great Republic_." Sarcasm dripped from her words, but Alina was unnerved by how similar the sentiments were to those she'd had on Jakku. "This Senate takes years to decide anything, longer still to carry them out, and while we mess around, angsting over the minutiae of every tiny thing, people are suffering and dying."

Her voice was becoming more strained, more desperate, but Alina couldn't help but wonder if it was an act - a way to convey more passion than the Princess could otherwise. A lot of the things surrounding her felt. . . fake.

"Why are we here, if not to help our people, the people of the _galaxy_?" she pressed on. "Personal power? _Money?_ " She scoffed on the word. "That may be your priority, but it is not mine. That may be the Republic's, but it is not Mandalore's, and I believe that many of your worlds share the sentiment.

"If you disagree, do you need really need any more proof?" She shook her head. "Because I will give it to you, all wrapped up neatly in one topic: the clone army."

Next to her, Genya sucked in a breath. "Oh boy," she said. "This'll be interesting."

"The clone army?" Alina asked, but Aleksander shushed her as Ilse started speaking again.

"We are all familiar, I trust, with the consternation it caused when it was first brought up," she said. "A secret army, apparently commissioned by a long dead Jedi, grown from a criminal's DNA? It reeks of subterfuge. And that's without even debating the ethics of growing a massive batch of humans - _sentient, intelligent beings_ \- only to fight and die, without giving them the choice of whether or not to serve.

"I maintain that this ongoing debate represents every flaw the Republic has to offer. How can we not decide on one matter long enough to take action, which could potentially affect the lives of millions upon millions of sentient beings across the galaxy, clones or otherwise? How did our all-powerful, all-righteous Republic not discover the creation of the army in the ten years it was in production? And finally," she raised her voice, "to return to my original point, _how can we still trust the Jedi to run our government, when they kept such a thing secret in the first place?_ "

There were shouts of consternation, of agreement, of disgust. One voice rang out above the rest: " _What_ is she _proposing_?"

Princess Ilse of Engelsberg looked straight into the holocam fixed, so that every holographic image of her around the room seemed to be fixing every senator with the same appeal. Alina, in their own pod, found she couldn't meet the woman's gaze. "I am proposing a vote," she said, clearly and loudly. "I am proposing that every citizen, on every planet in the Republic, gets a say on this matter. Not just the matter of the Jedi," she took a breath, "but on whether or not they want to form a new government, a better _government_ , and leave the Republic itself."

There was silence for a moment.

Then the shouting started anew.

Alina winced at all the noise, all the emotions, all the _people_ , feeling her poorly assembled mental shields begin to crack under the onslaught. She shuddered, and Aleksander reached out to grasp her hand.

"Here," he said, and she felt a touch of a Force presence around her, peculiarly cold, the emotions shielded from her view, but then suddenly the voices in her head were silenced. All she could hear were the echoes of her own thoughts.

She almost cried from the relief of it.

Aleksander's comlink beeped, and he glanced down to read the message on it. He stood up.

"The Council have made their decision," he said. "They're requesting our presence in the High Council Chamber."

Alina nodded, lips pursed, and accepted his hand as he helped her up.

The senators were still arguing when they left.

* * *

Genya wasn't allowed inside the chamber for such a momentous event, so she asked Aleksander to pass on her message before she waved a cheery goodbye, winked, and jogged off.

Alina smiled as she departed, but the expression dropped just as quickly. She swallowed several times; Aleksander reached out to squeeze her hand. She squeezed it back, then dropped it.

She took a deep breath, and walked in.

The Council was waiting. She felt their attention latch onto her as she passed the threshold, like sweat clinging to her back. She turned to Baghra, biting her lip, as Aleksander stood behind his mother's seat, on her left, and Zoya stood on her right.

Alina tried to meet Zoya's eye, tried to gain some sort of reassurance from her, but the Jedi's face was steadfast and unyielding. So Alina's gaze flicked to Aleksander, who actually did give her his best attempt at a smile.

It _did_ make her relax slightly, even if she knew that he had been outside with her, and that there was no reason for him to have a good feeling about this.

Baghra cleared her throat; Alina jumped slightly, then scolded herself for the reaction. She folded her hands together behind her back, trying to stop them from shaking.

"Alina Starkiller," the Grandmaster said. "We have discussed your immense Force potential, your age, and your situation, and we have decided to allow you to be inducted into the Jedi Order."

Alina thought she heard a mutter behind her - _"Like we would ever do anything else"_ \- but she wasn't listening to it. Her gaze was fixed on Baghra, on what the implications of this were.

She was going to become a Jedi.

Her heart thundered at the thought of it.

She was going to become a Jedi, the Jedi's potential _Chosen One_ , while the chaos she'd just seen raged through the galaxy. While the Jedi were defiled and hated, their name dragged through the dirt and dust, their powers stripped and authority taken away if the opposition was successful.

Did she really want to? Even without taking the political conflict into account, the brief description of a Jedi's life that Zoya had given on the way here sounded brutal. Very, very difficult.

Did she really want to live a life with no attachments? Constantly fending off anger and hatred and sadness, all natural emotions for a human, and a teenager at that, to feel? Did she really want to dedicate her entire existence to helping a galaxy that had barely given her a scrap of help in the first place?

If she hadn't had such tight control over her facial expression, she might have smiled wryly, shook her head. Because there was no point in questioning whether or not she was going to become a Jedi.

What else would she do? Go back to Jakku?

She almost snorted. No one wanted to go back to Jakku.

And, at the end of the day, political chaos or not, she had a power that meant. . . this was where she belonged.

More than anything, Alina wanted to belong somewhere.

So when Baghra asked her, "Would you like to be inducted into the Jedi Order?" there was never any question of her not saying:

"I would."


	5. Episode V

Zoya smiled to herself at Alina's answer. Of course, there'd never been any doubt. Who _wouldn't_ leap at the chance to learn about a power so few people had?

Baghra nodded. There was no way any tangible emotion would ever cross the Grandmaster's face, but Zoya didn't imagine she was pleased. She'd had reservations about this whole thing, all throughout the debate, even if the outcome had pretty much already been decided on. They weren't about to turn away the possible Chosen One - _especially_ when they'd just learned that a Sith Master may be out there, plotting their next move.

Nevertheless, Baghra glanced at her son, frowning. Sure enough, Aleksander hadn't taken his eyes off Alina since it all started, and Alina seemed to be drawing strength from his support. Zoya could see why Baghra was worried - Aleksander was only slightly older than Alina, and the capacity for attachment was definitely there - but it seemed slightly hypocritical for Baghra, who'd fallen in love herself twenty years ago, with the nineteen-year-old son living proof of that today, to worry about attachment.

Even so, Zoya would still warn Alina. . .

"So now the only matter left to be settled," one of the other Masters on the Council, a red-robed Ithorian, "is who shall train her."

Zoya frowned slightly, and stepped forward, next to Alina. "I have already said that I would like to take on Alina as my padawan."

"You?" Baghra scoffed. "You're barely a Jedi Knight."

"Alina and I know each other," Zoya pressed on, meeting Alina's eye. _See? I care about your wellbeing, not just my own ambition._ "It will make the transition easier for her."

"She's right," the Ithorian from earlier said.

Baghra pursed her lips, the way she was wont to do when things weren't going her way. "Would anyone else like to suggest themselves as a Master to young Starkiller?" She looked around the room, and her eyes alighted on a green-scaled Trandoshan on the other side of the circle. "Botkin?"

Botkin, who was typically assigned to teaching younglings and padawans saber fighting, shook his head. "I have too much on my plate, with too many other padawans, to take on one of my own," he said. "But I do suggest that we hand her over to Nazyalensky for the core principles and training, while allowing each of us to train her in the specifics. I can teach her to use a saber, you can teach her specifics of meditation, Master Baghra, and so on."

Alina pinched her lips together, and Zoya idly wondered if she simply didn't like being spoken of as if she wasn't there.

Despite her annoyance, though, she remained quiet and docile under their scrutiny. Zoya felt an inexplicable surge of pride.

Baghra nodded in approval. "We shall do that, then." She looked back at Alina and Zoya. "Starkiller, you are hereby released into Nazyalensky's tender care." There was something droll about the way she said that.

Zoya bowed. After a jerk of surprise, and a brief hesitation, Alina bowed with her. "Thank you, Master Baghra."

"You are dismissed." Baghra waved her hand. "Go and settle her with a room in the living quarters."

* * *

The next few days passed in a blur for Alina, then turned to weeks, then months. She became used to the sharp staccato hum of the bell that work her early every morning, the dust motes floating in the white light of the otherwise spotless hallways, and after a while she stopped vomiting every time she ate too much food. Her desert tan faded, her skin became more flushed, healthier, and she began to put on weight.

Half of that was put on because of the food. Obviously, she'd never had much of it on Jakku, so it was surprising to her that, even living a Jedi life of austerity, she was allowed to go back for seconds if she was still hungry.

Most of the time she did. Even if she ate too much for her sensitive stomach to handle, she kept going back for more.

The other half was put on in muscle.

She'd become intimately familiar with the forms and stances a Jedi used to fight with a lightsaber. Botkin, the teacher in charge of saber skills, was a particularly brutal taskmaster and had dedicated himself to catching her up to the other padawans her own age, no matter how many bruises she got while doing it. The click of training foil on training foil drifted through her dreams, and she found that when she tried to clear her head for meditation, the rhythmic _one two three four one two three four_ was always there, thumping along like a second heartbeat.

But all the saber training didn't matter. The fact she'd built her own twin lightsabers out of the crystals she'd taken from the Sith Lord didn't matter. The progress she'd made in using and manipulating the Force didn't matter.

Every time she went up against her peers, she got knocked flat on her arse.

Her peers would grin. Botkin would tut. Zoya would shake her head, disappointed. And Alina. . .

Alina would get back up, pick up her training foil, and go again.

Which was why she was here, now. Because she kept losing, and she needed to get better, so she'd asked Aleksander to help her, and he'd generously given up his free time to help her practice.

"Try and open yourself up to the Force more as you fight," he suggested.

She frowned. "But Botkin said-"

"I know he bans everyone from using it during training, in order to get them used to the motions," Aleksander said, "but that method doesn't work for everyone. And it's clearly not working for you." He settled back into the ready stance, his foil held up in front of him. "Just try it."

She took a deep breath. "Okay." She lifted the training foil again. "Let's go."

She opened herself up to the Force, and it flooded in, heightening her senses to near-painful clarity. Pathways and possibilities branched out before her as she brought her foil close to her chest; she peered through the haze. She could strike first, go for his upper arm. . .except then he could easily parry it, it would only take a flick of the wrist, so really that wasn't the most logical choice to make. . .

. . .but the Force said it was correct. And the Force could never be accused of being logical.

She narrowed her eyes at him; he gave her a little smirk in return, sinking back slightly-

She struck.

The foil nearly thwacked him on the bicep with as much force as her arms could offer, but it was stopped a hairsbreadth away by his own foil, which barely got up to parry in time.

It was his turn to narrow his eyes now. "Impressive," he conceded. "Most _impressive_."

He struck as he said it; she thrust the foil up to meet it. The loud _clack_ pierced her ears, but then she shoved downwards, his defence falling away, then he swung at her. She blocked, stabbed forward, shoved all her might into it-

His foil was bending under the force of it, his teeth gritted in strain-

She broke off her attack suddenly; while he stumbled back, she smacked the foil so it was loose in his hand. . .

. . .and summoned it to her own.

She rested the two swords lightly on his collarbone, crossed at the centre. "Yield."

He just grinned, and leaped backwards. She swore to herself, and turned; by the time she was facing him he'd summoned another foil from the rack on the wall and was pressing his attack.

But now she was fighting with two blades.

She shifted one to the reverse grip and used it to parry his attack, while the other stabbed forward; he jerked back, eyes wide, before he yanked the foil back, brandished it in a showy twirl and stabbed forward. She deflected it effortlessly.

He was getting frustrated now. He swung again; she blocked it with her right foil perpendicular to the ground, and used the left to rap on his knuckles. He swore, and dropped the foil. Before he could summon it to his hand again, she kicked it away.

She pivoted on her foot, foils whistling through the air, but felt the gentle nudge of the Force push them away before they touched him. She ground her teeth, and stabbed again; he pushed them away again - and again - and again. . .

Letting a snarl rip from her throat, she ran at him, intent on _kicking_ him into yielding-

And was flung backwards.

She smacked into the wall, the breath shooting out of her with an _oomph_ , her foils clattering to the floor.

Aleksander was laughing. "That was good."

She staggered to her feet and glared. " _Ow_." He only laughed harder at her indignation. "Was that really necessary?"

She tried to shake off the lingering numbness. Something about that Force push, about the way Aleksander wielded the Force in general, felt. . .

. . _.cold._

"We _were_ fighting with the Force," he said, summoning one of the foils to his hand and pointing it at her. "What did you expect me to do? I wasn't about to let you beat me."

"It would've been _nice_ ," she chided as she massaged her shoulder, even if there was no real heat in it.

"Hey, don't worry. I promise you you're getting better." She gave him a sceptical look. "I'm serious! Besides, you fought ten times better with two foils than you ever did with one. Did you say you'd learned to fight dual-wielding on Jakku?"

It took a moment for her to reply. "There was a woman who taught me, yes," she admitted. "My weapon of choice to protect myself were two long knives I found, and she taught me the forms of how to wield them. I used them well. Well," she added, slightly bitter, "until that fragging Sith Lord cut them in half with his lightsaber."

Aleksander winced in sympathy. "I'm sorry," he said, though it was probably more courtesy than actual apology. He hadn't actually done anything, after all. "It must have been terrifying, going up against him with Zoya knocked out, and your only weapons useless."

How did he know Zoya had been knocked out? It wasn't a topic her master boasted about, and Alina knew she hadn't mentioned it before.

"I'd rather not talk about this," she said stiffly. She didn't really want to think about Jakku at all - least of all the things that'd happened there, the people she'd left behind.

Aleksander clearly didn't understand it, but he was respectful of it. "As you wish."

She brushed a touch of plaster dust off her shoulder, and bent to pick up the foil from the floor. "Let's go again."

"Of course," he said, then, paradoxically, tossed the foil aside. "Let's do it with the lightsabers, though."

She lowered her foil. "Lightsabers?" Her voice was confused. "That sounds dangerous."

"Not at all," he assured her. "I assume you built the training setting onto your lightsaber?"

"Of course, but-"

"Well then, this is exactly what that's for."

He wandered over to where they'd dumped their robes and bags, and drew out his own lightsaber. Alina followed and did the same. Her twin lightsabers were a comfortable weight in her hands, their unusually short hilts the perfect fit. She lit them, and fiddled with the dial on each hilt, listening to the humming sound change as the beams lost their intensity.

She glanced up to see Aleksander observing her. "White lightsabers," he commented, glancing at the colourless blades. "I've not seen that before."

She fought the urge to blush, and glanced at his. It was green, exactly the same shade as many of those she'd seen the other padawans wield.

"Let's go through the forms with the lightsabers first. They can be different to a training foil," he suggested, and she nodded.

"You should ask Botkin to teach you Jar'Kai," Aleksander commented as they began. "Obviously you've got the basics, and you'll still need to learn to fight using a single saber in case you lose one, but it seems silly not to build on one of your obvious strengths." He paused. "Although, the way you favour the reverse grip might drive him up the wall."

She glanced at her right hand, the way it held the lightsaber, and shifted to the standard grip.

"Why do people call you Lightling?" Alina asked, as they moved onto Form III. "Half the time you're older than they are."

"It's because of my mother," he admitted grudgingly, although she got the sense this wasn't his favourite topic to talk about. "It was her nickname for me. I was always called it when I was little - it's supposed to mean 'little light', or something - because, I guess, everyone knew me. Everyone knew I was called Lightling, and it stuck. It was a term of endearment that never faded."

She nodded. "Makes sense."

He flashed her a look. "Please don't start calling me that."

"I won't," she promised, laughing, as she finished the last of the forms.

"Now," Aleksander said, once he'd finished as well. "Do you want to get back to sparring?"

"Absolutely."

They settled into the stances, the humming of the lightsabers setting her nerves on fire, her impulses jumping.

"Also," Aleksander said, "try to use your frustration. It'll help you get more powerful."

"I thought that was of the Dark Side," she said warily.

"Frustration?" He laughed, but there was something forced about it. Something fake. "No. Anger, hate and fear are of the Dark Side. Frustration's harmless." And, before she could ponder that further, he struck.

* * *

"Calm down, girl," Baghra snapped at her. "Let the Force flow through you; stop trying to grab at it."

Alina closed her eyes, and did as she was told. After the tangle of frustration from her duel with Aleksander earlier, she felt restless, unsettled. Like something was clouding around her, and she couldn't clear her mind quite as easily.

Getting angry at Baghra for snapping at her probably wouldn't help, though.

So she relaxed her shoulders, taking deep, rhythmic breaths. She could do this, even with the frustration making it harder for her to think charitable thoughts, or do charitable things.

When she reached for the Force, it was as clear and bright and intoxicating as ever.

* * *

Alina's training continued to progress well, but as it did, so did the unrest in the Senate. The place became a powder keg; any given conflict was guaranteed to cause an uproar. The already slow whirring of the Republic, what little progress it had been making, ground to a halt.

Even Alina, who didn't attend Senate meetings, who didn't attend Council meetings, could tell.

The tension was everywhere on Coruscant. It was in the markets, crowded around every news outlet. It was in the Temple, in every hushed conversation between Masters, hurriedly stopped when other people wandered past. It was decided that the vote that was proposed by Princess Ilse would go ahead; an overwhelming majority of senators had been in favour of it, if only because _they_ wanted to leave, or because they believed that no one wanted to leave, and they wanted to show Ilse up.

What it meant was that the tension only grew, and a storm of propaganda was unleashed across the galaxy. _Leave the Republic!_ some said. _Keep the Republic!_ said others.

Naboo, to Alina and Zoya's surprise, was in the latter category.

Nikolai stayed on Coruscant for a few months, building political ties for Naboo and doing who knew what else while Alina began the basics of her training, but after a while he had to return home. And since Zoya was technically still supposed to be his bodyguard, and Alina was her padawan, they had to return with him.

"I'd have thought Naboo would be one of the planets wanting to leave the Republic," Alina murmured to Zoya as they sat in the back of the speeder travelling through the streets of Theed. There wasn't much graffiti in this area - certainly not when compared to some parts of Coruscant - but there were posters and banners, and none of them were in support of leaving.

"As would I," Zoya replied, giving Nikolai a pointed look.

He just raised his eyebrows. "Why? Because I supported the bill to curb the powers of the Jedi?"

"That _is_ what started this mess."

Nikolai shook his head. "I supported the bill because it was right. You saw what it was like in there. Half the Senate thinks that the Jedi have too much power. I was trying to change that, make the Republic better, before something like this had the chance to happen."

"And?"

"And what?" he asked. "I failed, obviously. Princess Ilse took it too far, and now there's chaos."

"Understatement of the century," Zoya muttered, but no other comment was made until the speeder reached its destination.

Alina just sat back in her seat. Everything she knew about the situation came from Genya and Aleksander. Genya liked gossip, liked sharing whatever titbits of information she'd heard in her daily errands, and Aleksander. . .

Aleksander had been appointed as the Jedi's representative in the Senate.

It had been approved by the Supreme Chancellor himself. With the topic of the Jedi being so common in the Senate nowadays, it had been decided that they needed a representative to be present during those discussions in order to keep the facts accurate, _and_ to act as go-between for the Senate and the Council. It couldn't be someone on the Council itself, so Aleksander, whose loyalty to the Jedi could never be in doubt, was chosen.

Alina knew Zoya had volunteered for the position, but she'd been turned down on the grounds that she now had a padawan, while Aleksander didn't. Teaching should be her main priority.

"The vote's tomorrow," Nikolai said quietly, once they'd reached the Theed Royal Palace. Alina winced at the sudden ire she could feel radiating off Zoya.

"And what will you be voting?" she asked him, as he climbed out of the speeder.

He met her gaze, and offered his hand to help Alina out. She took it, and climbed out herself. "I'll be voting to stay, of course," he said. "We've covered this."

"How many people do you think will leave? Join the CIS?"

He pressed his lips together. "The Confederacy of Independent Systems doesn't exist yet," he told her. "No today. But tomorrow. . ." He swallowed, and for the first time since she'd met him, he looked truly lost. "I don't know," he admitted.

"The people voting to leave have some good points," Alina said, then amended it to, "but I still think staying is the correct course of action," at Zoya's glare.

"Those Separatists won't win," he master said firmly. "The few systems that _do_ decide to cut ties with the Republic will find that they now have only a handful of allies, and they'll come scurrying back with their tails between their legs once their currently bountiful trade opportunities run dry. You'll see."

Alina didn't think she would, but she nodded anyway.

* * *

Nikolai was glad not to be on Coruscant when the vote came through.

He watched the official stream from the Theed Royal Palace, in the Queen's throne room. The Queen herself sat in her traditional garb and makeup, face as impassive as ever, but as someone who'd studied the ceremonial symbols and colours the monarch of Naboo would wear on certain occasions, Nikolai was chilled by her choice of makeup. True, one half of her face was done to represent hope, new beginnings, light - but the other half said sadness, and the end of something good.

Not knowing the Queen's personal opinions on the matter - not having had the chance to speak to her about them - Nikolai could only wonder why she'd made that decision.

He stiffened when the holoprojectors began to whir, and an image coalesced in front of them. The Senate Chamber appeared, the Supreme Chancellor already in his podium, face grave and solemn. Nikolai felt Alina and Zoya, standing behind his chair, tense up.

The vote had gone out to every system in the Republic. The people of each world voted, the results were collated there, and a decision was made whether or not the system would remain a part of the Republic.

Once the decision was made, the world's senator would vote that way. The votes would then be collected, and the Chancellor would read out the results.

Everyone who would vote had done so. Now all that was left was the results.

Nikolai turned his head to address the Queen. "Did Naboo choose the CIS or Republic?" he asked, even though everything pointed to Republic, even though he knew he hadn't been alone in voting Republic, even though it was really a moot question.

The Queen seemed to understand - at least, she didn't comment on how pointless the question was. "Republic," she said, and relief slackened the muscles in his shoulders.

He nodded, and turned back to the projector. "I'm glad."

On Coruscant, the Chancellor cleared his throat. "The results are in," he said, and although he was known for being a fantastic public speaker, although his strength was a large part of why he was so popular, his voice shook a little. "The amount of star systems who chose to secede is approximately one million, two hundred thousand-"

" _What_?" Nikolai wasn't sure who said it, but the sentiment was shared all around the room. That was almost half the galaxy.

"-including, but not limited to, the systems of Mandalore, Onderon and Jakku," the Chancellor continued, "Meanwhile, one million, seven hundred thousand chose to stay in the Republic, with three hundred thousand systems being neutral on the matter." He bowed his head. "In this case, five representatives for each point of view shall enter into talks tomorrow on how the secession will work, and what relationship the Republic will have with the newly born Confederacy of Independent Systems-"

"Separatists, you mean!" someone shouted.

There were murmurs of agreement. "Nothing but warmongering Separatists!"

The Senate dissolved again into a mass of shouting, and the hologram winked off.

Nikolai heard Alina's whispered, "What's going to happen now?" but he didn't really register it. He didn't really register anything at all.

* * *

Aleksander Morozova kept a straight, vaguely sorrowful face from the moment the results were in, to the walk back to his bunkroom in the Jedi Temple. Only when the door slammed shut behind him did he allow himself to smile, and even then it was barely there, a small, satisfied smirk that left the ghost of smugness on his features but didn't really change his expression at all.

This was working out better than he could have ever hoped for.

He dumped the stack of legislative papers onto the desk in the corner - the one he'd requested for him to work at after he was appointed senator for the Jedi Council - but didn't sit down just yet. He just stood there for a moment, and allowed the sweet taste of victory rush through him.

Well, it wasn't victory. Not yet. It was more like hope, or satisfaction - the feeling you got when everything was set, and one was in the perfect conditions one needed to thrive.

He'd been building distrust and dissent towards the Jedi Order for years now. Since he'd run away for a week when he was fourteen, just looking to see what life was like outside of the order he'd been born into, and had found so much more than he'd dreamed of. His Sith Master had taught him everything about the Dark Side - how to shield so that he appeared Light, even when Dark, how to use Force lightning, how to pass on that knowledge to an apprentice - and Aleksander had been using it to the fullest extent. He'd learned, and learned well, as any apt pupil should, then, as every apt Sith pupil did, slaughtered his master.

Then he'd taken his master's plots against the Jedi, mere seeds of greatness compared to what he himself would grow, and planted them.

His master had already created the clone army that would be used by the Republic in their wars, to discredit the Jedi, but it was Aleksander who'd taken the knowledge of their existence and falsified the records so that it seemed that a Jedi had been the one to request it. It was Aleksander who'd made the evidence resurface again, four and a half years later, and set the Senate in uproar.

But his machinations didn't stop there. He'd gone further.

He'd hired actors and spokespeople to mutter and whisper in politicians' ears about the powers of the Jedi, spreading lies and half-truths about what they did to the galaxy. Then he'd dispatched each of them, in more and more unsubtle ways, until it was clear that people speaking out against the Jedi were dying under mysterious circumstances. Until it was clear enough that anger and distrust spread.

He'd been thrilled when Aditi Hilli had left, further showing the weaknesses and flaws of the Jedi, but the trouble she'd spawned with Lah'mu's senator almost made it not worth it. Thankfully, no one had seemed to take the proposed bill to curb the powers and power abuses of the Jedi - undo all of Aleksander's work! - seriously. Not until Prince Lantsov, with his connections to the well-respected Senator Keramsov, came along, and threatened to give the bill the credence Aleksander couldn't afford it to have.

His attempts to assassinate the Prince had failed, and failed miserably. And that was where everything had almost come undone.

He hadn't known, when he'd assigned his newly trained apprentice to follow the Prince to Jakku and assassinate him, that Zoya had been assigned to protect him. He hadn't known, and nearly everything had come apart on that one thread: _The Jedi knew the Sith were still alive._

They would be on their guard. They would be wary of plots designed to destroy them.

Although. . .

He smiled to himself, standing there alone in the darkness. Really, that had worked out in his favour as well. Because wasn't it a tradition of Sith Masters to pit potential apprentices against each other, to see who was strongest? More worthy of the Order's mantel?

And while Alina hadn't _killed_ the man, per se, all the accounts of it agreed that she _had_ defeated him. Clearly, the one he coveted as his next apprentice was more powerful than his last.

His smile grew.

Because that was what he wanted her to be. The precious Chosen One of the Jedi, his apprentice, his servant. Having the privilege of teaching such a powerful specimen, of passing on the Sith's legacy to her. . . He wanted that.

And now, with the galaxy rent in two, he could easily fan the burning embers into the flames of war. And in war, darkness grew. It would grow inside of her, and the rest of the Republic. He knew the darkness was in the government, and he knew it was in her: he'd coaxed it out of her in their training sessions often enough.

Yes. That was how he would achieve his goals. The destruction of the Jedi, the corruption of Alina Starkiller, the conversion of the Republic into an Empire he would rule. . . All would be achieved through war.

He sat down at his desk, switched on the lamp, and began to flick through his papers.

He would stop the assassination attempts on Lantsov - get Alina and Zoya sent back to Coruscant, and his influence, as soon as possible. He would start the war, and have the Jedi be put in charge of leading it - make their stark image as heroes or villains even starker. And then he would work on getting a vote of no-confidence passed in the current Chancellor - and get himself elected in his place.

He tugged the Dark Side around him, and did his best to peer into the future. He saw no flaws unfolding in his newly formed plans.

So he smiled to himself again as he picked up his pen, making notes on the papers. It was a tiny step, a menial step, but it was necessary. This would be slow going, but it would work, and it would be worth it.

First, the papers. Then, the Clone Wars.

The galaxy would never be the same.


	6. Episode VI

.

 **.**

 **Part II: Passion**

 **.**

 _"There's too many of them!"_ Tamar's voice barked through the static. _"I can't-"_

"I'll be right there," Alina promised into the comlink, even as her arms blurred as they deflected blaster bolts left, right and centre, "as soon as I-" She hissed as a bolt seared her shoulder. "Can."

"Keep moving, Alina!" Zoya snapped as she ran past her, did a flip, and decapitated two battle droids. _Show-off._ She kept running, on into the melee, leaving Alina behind to nurse her shoulder and stagger forwards.

"Yes, Master," she said under her breath, gasping as she tried to shift the injury. Nothing major seemed to be damaged, and she'd definitely had worse in the five years the Republic had been at war, but _Force_ , it hurt like hell.

"Come _on_ , Alina!" Zoya shouted again. "They didn't make you a Jedi Knight early just for you to dally in the heat of battle!"

She grinned at the humour in Zoya's voice, then grimaced as the expression tugged on the slash along her face. She deflected two blaster bolts back at the droids who'd shot them, and kept running.

The clones from Zoya's legion shouted behind her, running after their general, but Alina ran in the other way. Tamar and the rest of the Soldat Sol needed her help.

She leapt onto the top of one of the enemy tanks, flipped the hatch open with the Force, and tossed a thermal detonator into it. By the time it went off, she'd already flipped it shut again and leapt from the tank to the top of a mound of rubble. There was a cry from the battle droids inside the tank, then it went up in flames.

Then she leapt off the mound of rubble, lightsabers lit and blazing, and went to find the Soldat Sol.

She'd sent Tamar round the side to try and outflank the droid army's forces, but apparently they'd anticipated that move. The last she'd heard of her captain, they were being slaughtered.

Christophsis had been a battleground for years by now. It was a strategic foothold in the Outer Rim, in one of the only sectors of the area that weren't in Hutt Space, and the Separatists had sent invasion after invasion to try and take the planet. Alina had been here for eight months already trying to repel them.

She somersaulted over one last pile of debris and rolled as she landed, slashing her right saber out to decapitate one of the droids that turned to shoot at her, her left deflecting back the bolts that she couldn't dodge.

"Glad you could join us," Tamar grunted next to her. "Tolya's force retreated back into the building, but as you can see," Tamar grunted again as one bolt struck her armour, thankfully not going through, and she was forced to back up, "we can't retreat. Not with those tanks in the way."

Alina glanced around. Sure enough, there were only about two dozen left alive in the battalion, and the hundreds of droids they were facing had boxing them in on two sides, with a building behind them. Tanks blocked the road out.

"I'll think of something."

They couldn't run through the droids without getting slaughtered. Could they go through the building, if she cut a hole in the wall? No, she realised; it was one of their supply bases. They couldn't afford to lose it.

Could they escape upwards?

She squinted into the sky against the glare off the crystalline formations Christophsis was famous for. No, but. . .

What about the crystals themselves?

"Tell the soldiers to fall back," she ordered Tamar. "Away from the tanks, towards us."

"Aye aye, General," Tamar said, then barked the order. "But. . . why. . ."

Alina threw her saber.

It scythed through the air, glittering like one of Christophsis's crystals, and carved a furrow through the crystalline formation she'd been peering at. She reached out her right hand to summon it back, even as she threw her other saber with her left, finishing the molten cut.

The tip of the structure slid sideways, then down, then it began to fall-

 _"Fall back!"_ she shouted at the stragglers who hadn't heard the order the first time. They flashed their gazes up to see what she was talking about, then scrambled to obey, even as the massive crystal crashed onto the ground, crushing the tanks under its weight and shattering into thousands of iridescent shards.

The path was rocky, and exposed, but it was there.

So Alina caught her second lightsaber as it spun towards her, and pointed it at the path. "Retreat!"

* * *

They made it back to the base. Casualties were high, and some people were killed in the fire that their impromptu path exposed them to, but the survivors made it back alive.

Only then did the adrenaline wear off, and Alina was aware of the blood staining her robes again.

"Uh, General," Tamar said, eyeing the red patch spreading over her shoulder. "You should probably get that injury treated."

She reached up to touch it, and hissed when her fingers made contact. "I will." She eyed Tamar herself. The woman had removed her helmet, and her white and gold armour was scorched with blaster burns, the sunburst symbol on either shoulder concealed, but the woman herself seemed unharmed. "You should get some rest."

"I will," she promised, "as soon as you get the medic to have a look at your shoulder."

Alina glared at Tamar. Tamar glared back.

Fortunately, it was at that moment that Ruby, one of the few survivors, called her over. "Urgent message from Coruscant, General."

"Put it through," she said immediately, giving Tamar a pointed look before she strode over to the holoprojector.

The image coalesced into a blue holo of Baghra and Aleksander.

"Grandmaster Baghra," Alina greeted, bowing, "Senator Morozova."

"Actually, Alina, the Senate has chosen me to become the new Supreme Chancellor," Aleksander corrected. "Someone moved for a vote of no-confidence in the previous one, and they decided that if the Jedi were to be under anyone's jurisdiction, it should be one of their own."

Alina smiled and nodded, then glanced at Baghra. The woman had a sour face on - at least, sourer than usual - and Alina decided she wasn't going to ask what she thought of the person she'd given birth to now having political power over her.

"I give you my congratulations, then."

"We didn't contact you for congratulations," Baghra snapped, apparently finding her voice again. "We contacted you to inform you that reinforcements are on their way to Christophsis, and that you and the 501st legion have been reassigned to another Separatist planet under siege. Your _friend,_ Senator Lantsov, went on a mercy mission elsewhere, and he was captured and taken there. You are to find Lantsov as quickly as possible."

Alina nodded, worry twisting her gut. _Nikolai. . ._ "Alright. I'll tell Zoya to get ready to leave-"

"Not Zoya, Alina," Aleksander said. "Zoya and her 212nd legion will be continuing the fight on Christophsis. You're the only one being reassigned."

"Just me?" Alina swallowed. "Master Baghra, I'm not sure-"

"If you're ready?" Baghra's dark eyes glinted. "I don't think you're ready. I don't think you were ready to be knighted nine months ago, but this is war, and we are running out of Jedi Knights. So this is your chance to prove yourself, Starkiller. Show me that you were worthy of the honour."

Alina gritted her teeth. She'd known that Baghra hadn't approved of her training only lasting nearly five years, when it was supposed to last at least ten. She'd known that every test Baghra had set her, she'd failed. She knew Baghra thought her too intense, too attached, too _unbalanced_.

But it didn't make her saying it out loud any less painful.

"Alright," she said, the words sticking in her throat. She glanced at Aleksander - he gave her a reassuring smile. "What planet am I assigned to?"

And then she knew this wasn't going to be good, she knew she would hate this, she knew this was another test, just by the way Baghra paused before she said it. By the way Baghra surveyed her intently as she said it.

This was a test, and Alina didn't want to fail it.

"You're going back to Jakku."

* * *

"So, seeing as all our gunships were destroyed, I'm assuming you'll leave with these gunships they're sending to drop off the reinforcements?" Zoya asked, even as the gunships she spoke of flew overhead.

"I assume so," Alina replied, hopping over a loose piece of rubble as they walked towards the landing platform. The sky was clear and the sun shining - it caught the crystalline formations and fractured into beams, leaving her to shield her eyes from the glare.

Zoya nodded. "Good. Maybe they'll drop off my new padawan while they're here."

Alina's thoughts ground to a halt, as did her pace. "Your. . ." She shook her head. "You requested a new padawan?"

Zoya looked startled that she had to ask, stopping a few steps in front of her. "Yes. I'm not training you anymore, am I?" Then, as she did on some rare occasions, she seemed to notice something was up with Alina. She squinted at her expression. "What's the matter?"

 _You're replacing me? Did you only say I was ready to face the Jedi Trials because you wanted to get rid of me? Am I not good enough for you?_

"Is it really safe to bring someone with virtually no combat training into a warzone?" she asked.

Zoya shrugged, "You had no combat training. You're still alive."

"Barely," she said dryly. Zoya laughed.

"Anyway, it's a Jedi's responsibility to teach the next generation. For all I know, this new padawan could be the shatterpoint on which the entire future of the Jedi Order depends, and if so then I want to make sure they've been taught properly, and pass on our ideals."

"So you're replacing me to do it?" Alina said, her joking tone hiding the bitterness underneath it.

Zoya laughed again. "We're not Sith. We're not obsessed with doing things in pairs. I'm sure the 212nd and 501st will be called upon to work together again at some point in the future, and then you, me and my new padawan will get to work in a trio. You're not being replaced, we're just moving over to give someone else room."

 _Except that I'm the one who's leaving_ , Alina thought, _and the padawan is staying._

Zoya was notorious for her obliviousness, but even she could tell that something was still troubling her friend. She reached out and squeezed her shoulder.

"If you're nervous about your new assignment," she said calmly, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze, "don't be. You're capable of doing this, Alina. I've trained you, and you learned well. You know what to do, _and_ you have the strength to do it."

"It's a _test_ ," Alina said, voice cracking on the word. "They're sending me to _Jakku_. There's no way it's not a test."

"But it's one you will pass with flying colours," Zoya assured her. "You are strong and wise, Alina. A far greater Jedi than I could ever hope to be." There was a sort of reluctance in the way she said that, and it just made Alina's smile wider. Zoya's arrogance would never let her admit someone was better than her, so the fact that she _had_. . .

Zoya saw her smile, and smiled back, equally beatific. "And I-" She caught herself, shock radiating across her features, and started again.

"And I am very proud of you," she said, words slightly stilted, like they hadn't been what she'd meant to say.

 _I love you._

Was that what she'd been about to say?

Of course not.

The Jedi Code forbade attachments.

But Alina wanted her to say it to her. No one had ever given her that gift, not in her memory - not Zoya, not Nikolai, not even Mal, all those years ago.

 _I love you_.

She mouthed the words, and wished she could say them aloud without breaking the rules of the order that had given her a home, given her a place to belong.

 _You belong where you're loved_ , she remembered reading somewhere. But if no one loved her, then did she belong anywhere?

"I'm proud of you too, Master," she said in lieu of that particular confession, and she saw the corners of Zoya's mouth tug up in a genuine smile for a moment before she puffed up her chest.

"Well, of course you are," she said, tossing her hair. "I'm me."

Alina smiled so much her face was still aching when they reached the landing platform.

Tamar, Tolya and the rest of the Soldat Sol were already there, standing to attention immediately when she walked up.

"Ready to go?"

"Yes, General," Tamar replied. "Everyone alive is accounted for."

Ignoring the pang in her chest that came with the phrase _everyone alive_ , Alina said, "So the moment those gunships are unloaded, we load ourselves on and fly out of here."

"Who's ready to take the war to Jakku?" someone shouted. Cheers answered it.

Alina pretended not to hear, as much for her own sanity as for the sake of discipline. She glanced up. "Here come the gunships."

They descended rapidly, each clone regiment getting off the moment the ship touched down and filing off the landing platform so the next batch could come. There were three gunships and two shuttles; the shuttles were unloaded more slowly, since they were full of supplies instead of soldiers, and Alina was just starting to think that Zoya's padawan would never turn up when a youngling waddled out of the second gunship.

Alina blinked, then shot a grin at Zoya beside her. "Looks like you'll be assigned law enforcement on Coruscant as soon as you're done here, in order to train this little one."

"I'm not _little_ ," the girl, a female human who was seven years old at _most_ , "my name is Nina Zenik, and I was the oldest youngling in the crèche!"

"Oh, Force," Alina muttered. "This war must be killing them off _fast_."

She knew Zoya had heard her, but she pretended she hadn't, the only visible reaction to the words a slight pursing of her lips. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" she snapped. Alina wasn't surprised - Zoya _hated_ children under age twelve.

Alina smirked. "Absolutely." She turned to walk to the gunship. "See you soon, and good luck training the little padawan!"

"I'm not little!"

Alina just shot Zoya one last grin, then sauntered back to the Soldat Sol. "Are we boarding this thing or what?"

* * *

It was cramped in the shuttle, but they were soon in one of the Star Destroyers orbiting the planet and emptying into the large hangar. They were assigned bunkrooms for the three day trip to Jakku, and Alina was planning on letting them get settled in without the pressure of their general's scrutiny on them, but Tamar's question brought her up short.

"Why do you hate Jakku so much?"

Alina paused. All the others in the Soldat Sol were looking at her now, waiting on the answer. She swallowed.

"Oh, Force," she muttered to herself in Huttese - it felt strange, talking in her native tongue for the first time in years - then said louder, "It was where I was born, and grew up. I wasn't brought into the Jedi Order until I was seventeen, and for those seventeen years I was struggling to survive. Jakku is not a kind place."

"You grew up on a Separatist world?" Ruby asked, voice shocked. Her face was tightly controlled, cautious.

Of course. Ruby was one of the most enthusiastic soldiers in the group; she was here because she loved the Republic. The idea that one of the Jedi she so admired had come from one of the worlds that were abandoning the Republic probably didn't sit well with her.

"I did," Alina answered frankly. "And I think Jakku's gripes with the Republic are genuine - not so much the gripes other planets have, but Jakku definitely."

" _Genuine_?" Ruby's voice held nothing but disgust.

Alina forced herself to stay calm, and looked her in the eye. "You're from Naboo, right?" The girl nodded, and Alina tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice as she continued, "Then you're very lucky; Naboo is a beautiful planet. But not everywhere's as beautiful as Naboo. Jakku is a desert, full of scavengers trying to scrape a living from whatever they can find. We would gather scrap pieces of metal from downed ships and sell them to get food and water rations.

"And the only time the Republic deigned to help," she continued, aware that her voice was cracking and tears flooding her eyes, "was when random politicians from well-off worlds decided to make themselves look better by distributing aid. It was how I met Nikolai and Zoya, and got off that dustball. The Republic didn't care about us." She shook her head. "We're in the Inner Rim, closer to the Core than _Naboo_ , and the Republic couldn't be bothered to extend its wealth to help the ten thousand people suffering and dying on a planet less than a day's trip away."

She took a deep breath, and was startled to feel the tears splash from her eyes and trickle down her face. She tried to laugh, wiping them away, but it came out wrong.

"So I know why Jakku wants to leave the Republic. The Separatists probably promised them a better future to get them to let them establish a base there, and what scavenger would refuse? Mal always said-" She broke off entirely at the memory of him.

She couldn't do this. She couldn't force Jakku to come back under Republic tyranny.

Her orders were to rescue Nikolai. It was implied that she subjugate the planet and populace while she was at it, but it wasn't explicitly stated, so she wouldn't do it.

Even if it meant she failed the test Baghra had no doubt set her.

Ruby had been placated, mouth half-open but unmoving. Tamar was still watching her, face grave. "Mal?" she asked.

Alina shook her head. "My friend," she whispered. "I had to leave him behind when I left."

Tamar asked quietly, "Do you think you'll see him there?"

"I hope-" not, so, she didn't know. Would she rather face him, and deal with the hurt left over from the last time she'd seen him, or would she rather never see him again?

But she knew that wasn't what Tamar was really asking.

 _Do you think he's a Separatist?_

She couldn't lie about that one.

 _This is a new government who's come to make themselves look better._

So she said, with a melancholy shrug, "Yes."

* * *

Nikolai hadn't been back to Jakku since he'd first met Alina here. He'd made sure that the woman who was elected Princess of Theed after his term was up continued to carry out the mercy missions - at least, until Jakku had allowed the Separatists to build a base on-planet - but he hadn't been back himself since the Queen asked him to serve as Naboo's senator.

He had to say, he wasn't enjoying the experience.

There were two guards outside the makeshift cell he was in - a tent, really, with him being tethered to a pole like an animal - and they sat in the only entrance, dealing out their ninth game of sabacc, barely sparing him a glance.

"Excuse me," Nikolai asked, "but would you fine gentleman mind dealing me in?"

The larger man just looked at Nikolai's hands bound behind his back and snorted, muttering something in that course language the people of Jakku seemed to use - Huttese, Alina had called it.

But the other man, about Alina's age, with unkempt, straggly blond hair and who looked vaguely familiar, gave him a look of pure and absolute loathing. "Shut your mouth, fancy pants," he growled. "We don't pander to Republic dogs here."

 _And yet you use words like 'pander'._ "A thousand apologies, good sir," Nikolai continued, letting a smile curl at his lips, "but have we met? You look familiar."

The man's expression went hard, but he just turned back to his sabacc game.

 _I must've seen him when I was last here,_ he mused. "Tell me, on what grounds are you keeping me captive?"

"You'll fetch a pretty price," the larger man said. "Important Republic senator like you. . . you'll _definitely_ fetch a pretty price."

"I'm flattered, really," he said, wishing his could put his hand on his chest and pretend to swoon, "but I doubt I'm as important to my government as you seem to think I am."

"Oh yeah?" the blond man said, glaring up at the sky. "Then why's the Republic sent three Star Destroyers to get you back?"

"Have they?" Nikolai mused, glancing upwards. It was a futile gesture; the roof of the tent was in the way. "How interesting." The man grunted again, barely turning his head to acknowledge him, and an image came to Nikolai's mind: this man, eyes closed and head lolling, being dragged towards his ship's medbay.

 _Ah_.

He tested it again. "Excuse me for hassling you again, but are you _sure_ we haven't met? I seem to remember your face distinctly."

"Well I suppose it's from the last time you were on this sorry excuse of a planet."

Nikolai allowed himself a tight smile. _Gotcha_. "I was?"

The man shot him a look of pure loathing. "Yeah, you were. Remember? Four years ago? Charity delegation come to make yourself look better."

"And you remember my _face_ from that?" Nikolai asked. "I'm told I have a memory much more accurate than most beings', and I barely remember yours."

"I don't remember your face," the man was still irritated, but so long as Nikolai kept pressing him, he would keep talking. That was what people like him were like: desperate to hurl whatever insults, throw whatever punches they had to, if only to prove their own strength. "I remember your _name_ , Republic scum. Prince Nikolai Lantsov."

"But my name wasn't attached to the charity delegation," Nikolai pressed. He had to admit, he was enjoying this. His face and chest still stung from where they'd stunned him, and he was enjoying making even one of these Separatist soldiers uncomfortable. Until he'd been handed over to this outpost, he'd been handled by droids. Droids were so difficult to rile up. "Nor was my title. And I certainly didn't introduce myself to any scavengers. So how do you know it?" A pause, "And, speaking of names, I don't think you ever told me yours."

The man was shaking now: shaking his head, his arms his back. He was so angry Nikolai half expected him to turn around and shout what at him what he'd already deduced.

But he didn't answer.

"Kid, calm down. He's trying to piss you off," the larger, older man said. They both ignored him.

"But wait," Nikolai said with rising glee. "I _did_ introduce myself to one scavenger . Someone who, surprisingly enough, is no longer a scavenger. Someone who, coincidentally enough, is probably on one of those Star Destroyers you can see above you."

There was silence, but he was near breaking point. Nikolai knew it. He just had to-

"I'm good friends with her, you know. Alina Starkiller-"

"That's it," the blond man growled, throwing down his cards and shoving himself to his feet. He blocked the entrance to the tent as he charged Nikolai; the senator caught a brief glimpse of the older man checking the cards he'd thrown down and grinning before the blond one was in his face, grabbing his hair with one hand and yanking his head up.

"Do _not_ talk to me about her," he spat in his face.

"Hey, buddy," the other man said in a tone that was half-awe, half-disgust, "you're friends with _General Alina Starkiller_?"

The man ignored him. "Do _not_ say anything else," he warned Nikolai. Nikolai, finding his vision had gone blurry, took a moment to respond.

"Going back to names for a moment, might I take a stab in the dark and wager that yours might be-"

The man's fist lashed out and knocked him into unconsciousness, but not before he said, "Mal."

* * *

They'd reached Jakku several hours ago, and Alina kept having to field worried comms from the Star Destroyer's captain inquiring as to when they were going to launch their attack.

They weren't, but she didn't think the captain would be too thrilled to hear that.

"This is Kelvin Ravine," she said, zooming in on the image the holoprojector projected to show a surface map of Jakku. "It contains several settlements, including scavengers' homes; we are _not to go there_. Are we clear?" She glanced round the briefing room, at the grave faces the strike team she'd chosen for this mission wore. "If we do slip into this territory, anyone who fires their blaster will personally answer to me. There are civilians there; we do not want them getting hurt."

Tamar pinched her lips together and gave Alina a look, but she didn't comment.

All she said was, "So how are we getting Nikolai out?"

Alina fiddled with the buttons to control the projector again, and zoomed in on a different part of the planet's surface. "This is Niima Outpost, where the Separatists set up their base. It's a temporary one for refuelling, an in-between waystation. There aren't many battle droids to defend it; mainly it's made up of-" she swallowed "-locals."

Tamar gave her another look. "So why are they holding Nikolai there?"

"He was captured during a relief mission to Takodana, as you know," she explained, pulling up another diagram, this one of the galaxy itself, "and he was pursued. The offending droids were already low on fuel when they took off; the closest planet to Takodana that was allied with the CIS was Jakku. They dropped off there to refuel, but something happened to their ship on the way in, and they crashed near the Starship Graveyard."

"Starship _Graveyard_?" one of the troopers in the room exclaimed, aghast. "How many ships go down here?"

"Quite a few," Alina said, once again turning to the holo of Jakku and showing the wreckage of the Star Destroyers that had crashed there in the last thousand years. "There's something about the atmosphere that messes with ships in a way that's fatal to people who aren't expecting it. Especially large ships."

Tamar shook her head. "It doesn't matter. What happened to Nikolai?"

"Well, our spies report that the ship crashed and was very damaged, and that all the other hyperspace-worthy ships were commissioned by the Separatists years ago. The droids have been fixing it for the past two weeks, while Nikolai's guarded by the locals."

"Alright," Tamar said, nodding, "so how are we going to get them out?"

Alina closed down the two holos and opened up another one - the one gathered by their spy drones that had carried out several flybys in the past few days. The sequence of events shown in the holos that flashed in front of them told them all they needed to know.

Niima Outpost hadn't changed since Alina had been there. It still had few resources - certainly not enough resources to bother using charged weapons like blasters.

This wouldn't be easy, but it wouldn't be hard. Baghra hadn't sent Alina here to see her perform miracles; she'd sent her here to see her perform. Especially when that performance was carried out without Zoya's help, rescuing the senator she called friend, on the planet that had given her so much grief.

The planet that Mal was probably on.

So Alina just studied the holos. "I have a few ideas."


	7. Episode VII

**This is a long chapter, and there'll be longer chapters in the future, but I want to make this fic exactly 10 chapters long so that's how I'm doing it.**

* * *

Nikolai woke to the sound of blasters.

His head throbbed; he groaned. All he could see was red, but he didn't know if that was his vision, or the blaster bolts.

"Stun only, remember!" someone shouted. "Stun only!"

Okay, so it wasn't the blaster bolts.

Someone was fiddling with the rope binding his wrists to the pole. They tugged it loose and dragged him to his feet; he groaned loudly, only to abruptly silence himself when he felt the cold blade of a knife pressed along the side of his neck.

"Make a sound, and I'll gut you," Mal warned, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Now, we're just going to step back. . . nice and slowly. . . nice and slowly. . ."

The knife was removed from his neck for a brief moment and Nikolai heard the sound of ripping canvas, as Mal presumably slashed open a back exit into the tent.

"Move it, _Senator_ ," he hissed, returning the knife to his neck and dragging him back through the newly created gap. Facing backwards as he was, Nikolai trying to peer out the front of the tent, but all he could make out the random light of blue stun bolts whizzing past, and all he could hear was humming.

Humming from the stun bolts, sure, but also from-

He eyes widened as a slim silhouette darted into view, two bright beams of light dancing in their hands.

 _Alina_.

The knife jabbed further into his skin; Nikolai gasped as he felt blood trickle down his neck.

"Stop gawking and _move it_ , Lantsov," Mal said. Then muttering to himself, "Almost there. . . almost there. . ."

Nikolai grunted, the wind shoved out of him as Mal threw him onto something like a crate, except it was metal, its edges smooth curves against his torso. Then Mal threw thick rope netting over him, and he panicked.

"What are you-"

"Quiet!" Mal hissed, then mounted the seat of the speeder - because this was a speeder, Nikolai was beginning to realise with daunting horror, and he was tied to the back of it - and gunned the throttle.

The engines sputtered, roared briefly, then died.

"Come on, come _on_ ," Mal muttered, smacking the side of the speeder. "Come _on_ -"

"Hey!" a girl shouted.

Alina.

Nikolai turned his head at the sound; she was sprinting towards them, white lightsabers lit. Mal threw a harried glance behind him as well, swore, and gunned the throttle again.

The speeder shot off into the desert night.

* * *

It took moments at the most for Alina to jump into the seat of another speeder, parked outside a tent, and give chase, but in those moments Mal was already far away and further, with the person she'd been sent to recover lashed to the back of the speeder like a lumpy second saddle.

The speeder didn't fail her like it'd failed Mal the first time; she was good with machines. Anything with wings, thrusters or engines, she could fly.

That didn't mean she had to enjoy the experience.

It was too dark for her to track Mal and Nikolai by sight now, but she tracked them threefold anyway: through her ears, through the sand they kicked up, and through the Force. She could tell where they were going.

"Damn idiot," she muttered. She honestly thought Mal knew better than to head towards the Sinking Fields.

But apparently he wasn't, because that was where he was headed. She just had to catch them before he could get there and make everything harder for her.

She fiddled with the controls, adding that extra burst of speed to the transport in a way she'd never had the chance to teach Mal. She was gaining on them now, and he knew it; he kept glancing back at her, mounting anger on his face.

Damn _idiot_. Glancing back only made him less aerodynamic, and with Nikolai an undignified lump on the back of the speeder he couldn't really afford to be that.

It didn't matter; it worked in her favour anyway. She was getting closer to him, and closer, until she was right up alongside him, neck-in-neck. He gave her a terrified glance - she ignored the flip in her stomach at the prospect of him terrified of her - and bashed his speeder with her own. Nikolai yowled as his fingers, clinging desperately onto the edge, were caught between them.

She gritted her teeth, but didn't waste time on an apology he wouldn't hear. They were coming up on the Sinking Fields now; once they were over them, they couldn't stop the chase until they were past, or else they'd drown in the sand.

She reached for one of the lightsabers at her belt and lit it, Mal's eyes going wide at the beam and its hiss. She slashed it downwards and sideways, carving through the main bulk of Mal's speeder and-

Right through the engine.

There was a burr, then a screech, and the engine started belting out smoke. Mal swore, trying to fiddle with the controls, but they were dead. The speeder was slowing now, and Alina used the chance to cut through the net holding Nikolai to the back of it. He tumbled off, his string of profanity quickly cut short when he hit the ground, winded. Mal sucked in a breath, giving her one last frantic glance-

And was knocked off the speeder by a punch to the jaw.

Alina yanked the speeder round, and hovered to where Nikolai had fallen, leaping off the transport onto the sand next to him. "Nikolai?"

He groaned; she frowned. "Nikolai?" She grabbed his arms and pulled him to his feet; he staggered for a moment, then managed to right himself. "Are you alright?"

He groaned again. "You know," he commented in his usual off-hand voice, rubbing his back, "riding those speeders might actually have been fun if I wasn't tied to the back of one."

She dropped her hands. "You're fine."

"All thanks to you, Master Jedi," he said, affecting a small bow. "You have my _deepest_ gratitude."

She snorted at him, and looked around. "What happened to-" Her eyes fell on a depression in the sand. " _Mal_."

She reached out, with her hand and with the Force, feeling, feeling- _there_. A large, complex life form thrashing under the sand. She took hold of it, and yanked it up.

Mal flew out of the sinkhole to land at her feet, spluttering sand out of every orifice he had. He gasped for breath, took a moment to stagger to his feet. Then he squinted up at Alina. "You-"

"Hello, Mal," she said quietly.

He shook his head vehemently. "You-" He was cut off by a fit of spluttered coughing.

Without a word, Alina reached for the knapsack she had slung over her back, and pulled a small flask of water out of it. She pressed it into Mal's hand; for a moment she thought he would refuse, but his common sense was stronger than his pride - at least, it was sometimes. He drank the water.

Once his mouth was clear, and his eyes had cleaned themselves, he glared at her, then past her to where Nikolai was fluffing his hair, brushing the sand of his clothes. "Republic scum."

Alina sighed. "Nice to see you too, Mal."

"Oh, I'm sure," he said. If it had been Nikolai saying it, his voice would've been mockingly sarcastic, and just hearing it would've made her feel better, but Mal's voice was hard and cold. "I'm sure you're thrilled to meet with a Separatist who you abandoned four years ago. What, you gonna kill me the way you killed all the people back at Niima?"

Alina repressed the urge to correct his grammar on Zoya's behalf - a Separatist _whom_ you abandoned four years ago - but she decided to focus on the part of that sentence that a) a reply to might get her in Mal's good graces again, and b) wasn't the personal part that she would prefer to leave alone right now.

"If any scavengers were killed by Republic troops back at Niima," Alina said slowly, "it was because those troops disobeyed my orders. I was explicit in that there were to be no kill shots, stun only, and no one was to die."

Unfortunately, Mal didn't seem to take it the way she'd hoped he would. Then again, she wasn't sure why she was surprised; if Mal was angry, even that anger was unreasonable, he would find something to blame for it.

"What?" he asked, just as aggressively as before. "Is Jakku not important enough to bother capturing the planet?"

Alina opened her mouth, then closed it. "Honestly? No. It's a waystation. No one cares what side it's on, and that's not right, but it's the way it is."

"Then why were you sent here?"

"To rescue _him_." Alina jabbed Nikolai in the side. "Although personally, I don't see what the fuss was about. We should've just left him to rot."

Nikolai rubbed his side and declared, "You wound me, madam!"

She shot him a smile, hand jokingly straying to her lightsaber. "Not yet I haven't."

Then she glanced back at Mal whose face, if anything, had only become more murderous.

"So now you've rescued him," he said bitterly, "I suppose you'll leave?"

"Not necessarily."

The words came out before she could stop them, and she tried not to flinch at the way both Mal and Nikolai seemed to stare at her all of a sudden.

"I _mean_ ," she elaborated, "that I was ordered here specifically by the Jedi Council, and even if we have rescued Nikolai, I still have to contact Master Baghra to get permission to leave."

"Why do you need _permission_? You're a Jedi." Mal glanced at her lightsabers, his sneer fading slightly, then back at the sinkhole she'd dragged him out of.

"Because I'm a Jedi," she said slowly. "I have to answer to the Council."

"And I suppose it was the Council's orders that meant you couldn't kill any of the scavengers?" His tone had taken on that edge again. She gritted her teeth.

"The Council's orders were just that I rescue Nikolai," she said, loudly and flatly. "Everything else I did of my own accord - that was the _point_. Baghra sent me here to test how well I let go of attachments."

"Well, you let go of me pretty easily," Mal muttered.

Alina turned to him. "What do you mean?"

Mal just shook his head. "Your troops will probably be looking for you," he said, turning to glance at the speeder. "We should head back."

"As much as I'd love to see where your arguments go," Nikolai said, "he's right. I've had enough fun out in the desert night as it is, and I can't see anything."

Startled, Alina glanced at the sky. He was right. They'd launched their attack at sunset; now the sun was completely below the horizon, the sky pitch black. She could barely see Nikolai, two feet to her left; Mal was just a blur of white.

She reached for her lightsaber and lit it. They all squinted against the light, but it made a good glowrod.

She swung it round in the direction of the speeders just in time to see Mal's one, which had eventually ground to a halt, collapse into the sand as its repulsors short-circuited. It tilted on its side for a moment, then collapsed into a sinkhole and disappeared.

Alina stared for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, it's not like it was gonna fly, anyway." She glanced at the horizon again, and found that even the white sand was retreating to a black blur. "Come on; we've still got one speeder left. I'll drive." She threw Mal a look. "So long as you don't try to stab anyone in the back."

Mal just snorted, then made to jog towards the speeders, turning his back on her. His foot went into a small pile of sand and kept going; he let out a strangled cry, eyes going wide-

Alina yanked him to the side with the Force. He hit the sand hard, sending it going up in a spray around him. He turned to glare at her.

"Sinking Fields," she said shortly, "remember?"

* * *

With three people on it when it was designed for one, the speeder didn't get very far. In fact, it was a miracle it got as far as it did.

Dawn was still a long way off when the engine started to splutter and die. They got off it hastily, in case it exploded, and for lack of specialised tools Alina removed the plating over the engine with the Force so she could look inside it.

"We're out of fuel," she announced, trying to peer into the shadows by the light of her saber without carving open some important fuses. It looked like the trick she'd pulled to catch up with Mal's head start earlier had sucked the fuel tank dry. "From the looks of it, we've been running on fumes for the last half hour. We'll have to leave this behind and walk."

"During the night?" Mal shook his head. "It's too far on foot; you know that. Especially in the dark. We'll have to set up camp for the night and hope your troops come looking for you. Can we call for help?"

"I think I have a comlink in my knapsack," she said, opening it to check. She did.

It had sand in it and wouldn't turn on.

Nikolai sighed. "So much for that idea."

"Set up a signal relay with the spare parts in the speeder, maybe?"

She gave Mal a vaguely surprised look. "That's a good idea," she said slowly, turning towards the speeder, then glancing back at the broken comlink in her hand. "Use the parts from the comm to build it?"

"Exactly what I was thinking." He was watching her closely. "Don't tell me you can't do it. I know you can."

" _I_ know I can," she replied, using her fingernails to tug at the panels around the comlink and peering into its works. "But I'll need you to hold the lightsaber while I work; I don't have a glowrod. Oh, and Nikolai," she reached behind her for the blaster strapped to her belt, "you'll need this."

Somehow, he managed to catch it in the dark. "May I ask why?"

"Teedos," Alina said.

"Gnaw-jaws."

"Ripper-raptors."

She exchanged a glance with Mal, and laughed. "Alright then," she said. "Let's get to work."

* * *

She might not have a working comlink, but she _did_ have a working chrono, and it told her many things. Namely, that it had been five hours since she and Nikolai went missing, and Tamar would almost definitely be sending out search parties and combing the airwaves for any trace of them, and also that it took her and hour and a half to build the signal relay system, by which point she was exhausted.

She'd been working since early that morning planning the attack and briefing her troops. Then there'd been the stress of the chase, and the argument, and now she'd finally managed to relax while building the relay, her body wouldn't let her forget her tiredness. She tried to stifle a yawn, and failed.

"You should sleep."

She glanced sideways at Mal as she gave the aerial a few last tweaks. "Funny."

"I'm serious," he insisted. " _R'iia_ knows how long you've been awake, or how little sleep you've had during the war; you need it."

"Is this concern I'm hearing?" she asked. "For a piece of Republic scum?"

"Don't push your luck," he warned, and she couldn't help but laugh. "But you _do_ need sleep."

"I do," she conceded. "But the gnaw-"

"I can stay awake and watch for gnaw-jaws," he promised. He tilted his head towards Nikolai. "The esteemed senator seems to have conked out already."

As if hearing them, Nikolai gave a particularly loud snore from the bed he'd made in the sand.

Alina sighed. "Alright." She reached down, next to where Nikolai had left the blaster she'd given him, and handed it to Mal. "There's not much power left in that thing, but it should be good for a few shots."

Mal looked at her for a moment, then hesitantly took it. She knew what this looked like - a Republic general giving a known Separatist a weapon? - but she just wanted to sleep.

No.

She just wanted to be _safe_.

But there was no _safe_. Perhaps there never had been.

"I'll keep a look out," he promised, and she smiled.

"I know you will."

* * *

Nikolai woke up to the sound of a single blaster shot, and the discontented chattering of what sounded like dozens of large insects - all of which was far too close for comfort.

He sat bolt upright, hissing as a bolt shot right over his head and singed the ends of the hairs. Mal ignored his complaint, continuing to shoot at the creatures by the light of the lightsaber. Nikolai turned to look, and-

 _Oh, Shiraya's word, insects aren't supposed to be that big._

They were about a meter long, with a shiny carapace that the blaster made a dent in but couldn't break through. Nevertheless, it was enough to scare the creatures, and they scattered soon enough, leaving only disconcertingly large tracks in the sand as they went.

Nikolai whispered, "What _were_ they?"

"Gnaw-jaws."

Nikolai sucked in a breath between his teeth, turning to face Mal. "And what-"

He cut off when he saw a blaster pointed at his face.

He froze, but allowed a small smile to creep across his lips. "Are you going to shoot me?"

The hand holding the blaster shook slightly. "I'm debating it."

Nikolai nodded. "I'm sure you are. It's pretty obvious you hate me." He glanced sideways at Alina. "But won't she be upset if you do?"

The hardness on Mal's face gave way to anger, and his hand shook even more. "I'm sure she would."

Oh. _Oh_. "Before you get any wrong ideas in that pretty head of yours, we're not romantically involved," Nikolai said baldly. "Not only are we just friends, but romantic attachments are one of the many attachments forbidden for a Jedi." Mal's face was clouded with confusion, so just to make sure he understood what he was saying, Nikolai added, "That's probably why she never visited you. As I understand it, this is her first mission alone. Before, she always had Master Zoya looking over her shoulder, making sure she didn't break any rules."

Mal's hand was trembling so much that the blaster was a blur against the night. "What are you saying."

"That Alina loves you. That you doubting her and hating her is, quite frankly, ridiculous. That the Jedi Council knows she's still attached to you, and sent her here on this mission to test her dedication to the Jedi Order." He glanced sideways at her again; she didn't seem like she would wake up anytime soon. "In fact, I'm willing to bet that the Jedi would've wanted her to reclaim this planet for good, overrun it, waystation or not. But she's not going to do that, and it wasn't her specific orders. So she won't do it. She's too attached to."

"Oh," Mal said, more sigh than word. He glanced at Alina, then back at Nikolai. "Oh."

He lowered the blaster.

Nikolai nodded. "A wise choice. Not only would that have ruined your relationship with her, but it would have failed, anyway."

"What do you mean?" There was suspicion in his voice now. "It would've hit you straight in the head. Brains splattered everywhere."

"It wouldn't have hit me at all." Nikolai gestured to the little flashing light on the side of the blaster. "It's out of power. You spent too much shooting at the gnaw-jaws."

Mal looked down at the blaster, then back at Nikolai.

"I hate you."

He grinned. "Oh, I know."

* * *

The relay buzzed. _"General Starkiller? General- kghkk_ - _killer?"_

Mal was the only one awake to answer. "Hello? General Starkiller is with me, can you track our location?"

A different voice - female, this time - replied. _"Very well. We're tracking your location. Who is this?"_

He swallowed. "I- I'm Malyen Oretsev."

There was a pause. _"You're Mal?"_ the speaker asked. He nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see him, but she wasn't waiting for an answer. _"Alright, we have your location now. We'll be there at dawn. Kir-Bataar out."_

He nodded. "Thank you. Mal out."

* * *

Alina woke to the amber light of the sun creeping through her eyelids, and the low hum of gunship engines creeping through her ears.

She blinked away the sand that had caught itself in her eyelashes, and looked at the two people next to her. Despite the fears she'd had, both of them were alive, and neither had been shot.

She glanced at Mal, then back up at the military.

The _Republic_ military.

Well. Neither had been shot _yet_.

There were three gunships approaching; the largest paused just above them, then began to descend. Alina, squinting against the sun, could just make out a slim silhouette hanging out of the ship, looking down at them.

It wasn't until the gunship had descended closer to ground and the figure jumped out that she realised it was Tamar.

"General!" she shouted, half-scolding, half-relieved. As reckless as Tamar was with her own life and skills, she didn't tolerate that sort of recklessness from her comrades. "Nikolai!"

Nikolai's face, turned upwards like a flower towards the sun at the sound of his name, broke out into a smile. "Took you long enough to get here!" he shouted back. "Shiraya knows what I've had to deal with while this one," he jabbed his ginger at Alina, "was asleep. Massive insects called gnaw-jaws, a rude scavenger. . ." Mal glowered. "I'm just glad I didn't have to find out what ripper-raptors were!"

Alina tried to imagine what it would look like if Nikolai ever went up against one of the winged reptiles. She shuddered, and to banish it from her mind she asked about the more horrifying part of Nikolai's story: "You had to take on _gnaw-jaws_?"

Nikolai grinned at her, and swept into a mockery of a perfect bow. "Not to worry, madam, we chased them from your sleeping form. Well," he added, "Mal did. I just sat around being annoying."

"Seems to be a habit of yours," Alina muttered at the same time as Mal. They exchanged surprised looks, and smirked.

The gunship had landed by now, and the other troopers inside it filed out. Alina smiled at them; they all smiled back at her in pure relief, scanning over her robes, the lightsabers still pinned at her belt, Nikolai's state of disarray.

Well, all except one of them.

One of them, Retvenko, was staring at Mal. He'd started just after giving the three of them a cursory glance, and he hadn't stopped.

He was a respected trooper in the legion. The one who stuck to the goals and the rules, and whose ambition was to rise through the ranks through his dedication to those rules. She'd noticed he was very good at that, and not necessarily in a way that was desirable for someone under her command. He always made sure to be on the side of things that would happen anyway.

So it didn't take long for Alina to clock onto what he was thinking. Her innards went cold.

"Are you Mal?" Retvenko asked, voice hard and clipped and imperious. He was from the Core, had volunteered for the Clone Wars to try and use it to bolster his career, and Alina knew by Mal's face that he could tell this man was the culmination of everything he hated about the Coruscanti populace. "The Separatist?"

 _Shit_.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. _Mal, don't answer, be tactful about this, please, please don't be your usual brutally honest self-_

Mal lifted his chin, and met Retvenko's eye. Then he let his gaze travel down, down past the freshly polished armour with the sunburst over the shoulder, the rigid posture. A sneer curled his lips.

"Yes," he said flatly. "I am."

Almost immediately, Retvenko pulled out a pair of binders. _How does he even have them in the first place?_ "Then you're under arrest, dog, for war crimes committed in the name of treason, and treason itself."

"You're not authorised to carry binders," Alina warned as he stepped forward. "Or make arrests."

Retvenko looked her in the eye and laughed - an almost unforgivable lack of decorum in the Grand Army of the Republic. But Alina had never been one to enforce that, and now it was coming back to bite her.

He just kept fastening the binders around Mal's hands. "Then Captain Kir-Bataar can do it," he replied. "Or you, General. But he needs to be arrested, and taken back to Coruscant to stand trial for his crimes. He can be held as Jakku's representative, be the one who formally declares their return in allegiance to Republic, considering there are no proper politicians on this planet, and all the other kidnappers have been. . . pacified."

"Pacified?" Alina's heart thudded against her chest. "What do you mean, _pacified_?"

It was Tamar who answered, albeit quietly. "While you were away. . . Well, we contacted Coruscant with the news of what had happened, and that you were missing. Grandmaster Baghra sent another Jedi to assist in the assault, and he ordered orbital bombardment of some areas, far away from where you could be, and sent in troops to capture the scavengers who fought back. The entire planet has indeed been. . ." she swallowed harshly ". . .pacified."

Alina opened her mouth. Closed it again. Shook her head-

"Stop!" someone said. Tolya, standing amidst the troops, glaring at someone behind Alina. She turned to look. . .

. . .just as Mal drove his elbow into Retvenko's face.

Retvenko was taller than Alina, but Mal was taller than both of them, so with the binders only half-fastened around his wrists he easily broke out of them and snatched Retvenko's blaster from its holster. Then, for good measure, shot him.

Retvenko howled.

It was only a flesh wound, Alina dismissed, he wouldn't die, and she had more important things to worry about because that blaster was on the kill setting and Mal had just turned it on Tamar, face contorted with rage-

Mal had no practice in marksmanship. No one on Jakku had, not with powered weapons like blasters. He missed.

He missed, and he hit Alina instead.

She didn't scream like Retvenko had, contained her pain into a brief grunt, but saw Mal flinch as if it had been a scream nonetheless, even as her hand flew to her stomach, where the bolt had hit, and the crimson blood staining her robes, the flying sand particles rubbing into the wound-

Darkness crept through her vision. She tried to stand, to give the order to _stun only_ , that Mal was _not to be harmed_ -

She didn't know who caught her before she hit the ground.

* * *

She woke up in a medbay.

The stiff white sheets seemed too harsh, too cold; she shivered, feeling every inch of fabric that brushed against her inflamed skin.

Sunburn.

She wanted to laugh, or cry, or scream. Seventeen years on Jakku, and five years was enough for her to lose enough of her tan that she burned? _This_ easily? When she'd spent less than three hours in direct sunlight?

But she didn't let herself dwell on it. She knew the thought was just to distract her from her other problems - one of which being the thick bandage around her waist, and the fact that she didn't know where her lightsabers were.

And Mal.

Mal's situation was a pretty big problem as well.

She glanced around again. There were no windows in the medbay, only polished white walls and rows upon rows of cots and bacta tanks, but if she listened and focused she could feel the whirring of the hyperspace engines underneath her. They weren't in orbit round Jakku anymore.

She sighed, and made to throw off the sheets. She needed to find out what was going on-

"Don't get up!"

She started at the shout, and flinched as it opened the stitches across the wound in her side. Pressing a hand to it, she hissed as the pain increased tenfold, sharper, louder, more intense, and warm blood soaked through the bandage to stain her palm.

"Sorry, General."

Alina glanced up. It was Tolya who'd come to see her, and she did her best to smile at him. It was more of a grimace, but he saw the gesture and smiled back.

"What's going on?" she asked. "Where's Mal?" The memory of what happened flashed through her again; her hand fisted in the sheets. "Is he-"

"He's fine, General," Tolya said. His tone was as grave as it always was, but the Force meant she could pick up on a graveness to his emotions that he didn't usually have. "He dropped the blaster after he realised he'd shot you, and we managed to wrestle him to the ground and arrest him. He's currently in the holding cells. Retvenko keeps trying to get inside and gloat, but he's not cleared to."

Despite Jedi propriety, Alina snorted. "His arm?"

"In a bandage, but almost fully healed. He just wears it for sympathy."

 _Almost fully healed?_ "How long have I been out?"

Tolya shifted where he stood. "A few days." In the aghast silence that followed, he added, "Don't worry, Nikolai's been keeping the troops entertained."

She snorted again, suddenly having the image of the senator strutting around like a peacock, and the troops laughing at his feathers. "How many of the troops are here? How many did we leave to monitor Jakku?"

He swallowed, and suddenly Alina had a bad feeling about this.

He said, "Everyone's here. Absolutely everyone."

"Then who-"

"The Jedi who ordered the. . . pacification. . . was left behind to deal with it," Tolya continued. "We've been recalled to Coruscant, along with our prisoner, who will be tried for treason and terrorism upon our return." His tone was flat, language fancy: he was directly quoting whoever it was that had ordered this.

"Tried for treason and terrorism," she repeated, throat dry. She knew full well what the penalty for that was. "I see. And," she took a deep breath, "who ordered this?"

Tolya looked surprised she had to ask. "Baghra, of course."

Of course. Because this was one of her tests. Because Alina had failed, so she would be tested again, and again, until she passed. Because _attachment was forbidden_.

Because the woman who'd refused to give up her _son_ saw it as her right to preach about _attachment_ -

"I see," Alina repeated, trying to quell the sudden surge of anger she'd felt. _Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering-_

She abruptly pushed herself to her feet, ignoring Tolya's squawked protests. "Where's Mal being held?

"General, the medic said-"

"The medic can go to hell," she snapped, despite the fact that she was dizzy, her side stung, she felt like she was going to pass out. . . " _Where is Mal being held?_ "

Tolya pinched his lips together. "Detention level. Cell block two-one-eight-seven."

"Two-one-eight-seven. Got it." She gritted her teeth, and pushed off the bed to stride towards the exit. She veered in a bit of a wobbly line at first, but she soon found her bearings.

"Wait, General," Tolya said quickly, and Alina stopped only long enough to give him a glance in acknowledgment.

Tolya rubbed the back of his neck, then said, "We recovered several items from the outpost before the pacification," he began, then he met her eye straight on. "One of them was a music box."

The shock made her sit down again. "He kept it?" she asked incredulously. "He _repaired_ it?"

Tolya didn't understand. He probably didn't even know what she was asking. But he nodded. "Yes. It was brought on board. It'll probably be turned over to your care when you're debriefed."

She nodded curtly. "Alright. Dismissed." He gave her a wary look. _"Dismissed_ , Tolya."

He nodded, lips pinched together, and left the room.

She braced herself, then stood up.

 _Cell block 2187._

She was going to see Mal _right this moment._

* * *

She didn't see Mal right that moment. Or that day. Or the next.

The medic had too much to say about generals with near-fatal injuries trying to undo all of her hard work.

So it wasn't until three days later that Alina, freshly dressed in new, clean Jedi robes, complete with the white arm braces and shoulder guards, marched into the detention level and demanded to see the prisoner from Jakku. When she was let in, Mal's gaze was immediately drawn to the sunburst emblazoned on her shoulder guards, where she'd painted over the symbol of the Jedi Order.

"So, you're in charge of the Soldat Sol?" Mal asked weakly before she could say anything, the Huttese words rolling off his tongue. "The sun soldiers?"

She nodded. "I can't remember who came up with it, but we wanted a proper name, and well, 501 looked a bit like S-O-L. The name stuck, especially with the symbol." She gestured to her shoulder guards.

Mal nodded, then fell silent. She threw a nervous glance at the holocam in the corner. She knew she couldn't turn it off, knew it was running live, knew that despite the fact that it was one of the Soldat Sol monitoring the cams on the other end, she wasn't comfortable with having this conversation witnessed.

And deep down, after what had happened with Retvenko. . . She didn't trust the Soldat Sol. She _couldn't_ trust the Soldat Sol.

But she had no choice.

So she just swallowed, and said what she'd come to say.

"You're being tried for terrorism and treason," she told Mal, trying to keep her voice flat. "You'll have a hearing on Coruscant, and receive your sentence there."

He hummed slightly. "So, I'll probably be put to death?"

She nodded.

He barely reacted. It scared her: Mal, who was so passionate, so angry, so _righteous_. . . didn't seem to care anymore what happened to him.

"Okay."

She sat down on the prison cot next to him. "Why are you so calm about this?"

He didn't answer. He just flicked his gaze down to her waist, her stomach - the slight bulge where the bandage still held the bacta strips in place as the last cells healed themselves. "How's your injury?"

She shook her head noncommittally. "It's nothing."

"Oh?" He barked a laugh; he knew she was lying. "So you've just been ignoring me for the past two weeks, not confined to the medbay?"

She frowned. There was a lot to frown about in that sentence, but what she said was, "Mal, it's only been a week since Jakku."

She felt his surprise through the Force, but she didn't need to; he didn't bother hiding the shock on his face. "Twenty meals," he said. "That's ten days, more, going on one or two meals a day."

"Three meals a day." He gave her a startled look. She continued, "Most places in the galaxy serve three meals a day, not two."

He frowned. "Oh."

It was that word that did it. She broke, grabbing his hands and squeezing them tight. "I'll save you, Mal," she promised, throat suddenly thick with tears. "I'll save you, I swear it."

He squeezed her hands gently, then let go. She let them drop into her lap, feeling her spirits drop with them. "I know you will," he replied, voice dull. She knew he didn't believe her.

She turned to leave, but just before she left, her back turned to him, she said, "You kept the music box." It wasn't a question.

She heard him shift about slightly, then:

"Yes," he replied. "I did."

She fled the room before any tears could fall.


	8. Episode VIII

They arrived at Coruscant way too soon. The sight of the planet sparkling against the darkness of space, like a jewel-encrusted orb nestled among velvet, didn't evoke the relief it usually did. This time, it wasn't a retreat from the war front, a blissful spell where she could walk through the Jedi Temple with Aleksander and Genya and Zoya and pretend that nothing was wrong.

This time, they'd brought the war back with them.

She was greeted by a Jedi entourage upon her arrival, but her attention was caught and held by Mal, being led away by her own troopers.

"A friend of yours?" someone murmured next to her.

She relaxed instantly. _"Aleksander."_

If anyone could help her, it was him.

He gave her an amused smile. "You're oddly glad to see me."

"I need your help."

"Of course." His joking expression dropped instantly, becoming more earnest, attentive; she didn't ask for help much. He knew it was serious. "What do you need?"

She swallowed, glancing back at the door Mal had disappeared into, then steeled her shoulders. She repeated, "I need your help," and explained the situation in as brief and quiet a manner as she could.

He pursed his lips. "I see your problem," he said, "and. . . I think I know how to fix it. Come meet me in my office later, and we'll discuss it in more detail."

Alina smiled, but she had to ask, hesitant, "You're sure you can do it?"

"Alina," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, "the deck is always stacked."

She watched him for a moment, ignoring the questions crowding on her tongue - _what does that have to do with anything? Isn't that undemocratic? -_ then he finished.

"But in this case, I know how to stack it in your favour."

* * *

Nikolai was rushed off to the medbay the moment he touched down on Coruscant, to be checked over for whatever illness they thought he might've picked up, despite his protests that he needed to talk to Alina - needed to discuss what would happen next - _immediately_.

She hadn't been let out of the medbay for days, and after she had he hadn't managed to _find_ her-

So he needed to talk to her. _Now_.

He stormed through the Jedi Temple, only half-aware of the glares that were sent to him by _relaxed, balanced_ Jedi whose _peace_ he was disturbing with his _unstable emotions_ -

Alina had ranted to him many, _many_ times over the years about common complaints in the Jedi Order.

He rapped on the door of her room, half-expecting to have some random Jedi of a random species open up and tell him he'd got the wrong door. _Again_. They all looked the same!

But, thank the Force, he got it right this time. Alina opened it, looking irritated.

"Did I interrupt something?" he asked at the sight of her expression, more out of habit than actual interest. He needed to have this chat with her.

She shook her head dismissively, looking angry, frustrated, confused. . .

. . .lost.

"I was trying to meditate," she said. "Trying to clear my head."

From her expression, it was clear she had not been successful.

She shook her head, and stepped aside in the doorway. "Come in."

"Okay," Nikolai said, following her inside, then cut straight to the chase: "I need to talk to you about preparing Mal's defence." He paused to give her time to process the words, then barrelled on as he paced around the small, minimalistic room. "I've already said I won't testify, due to lingering trauma and such, but you need a strong sympathy vote-"

"It's fine," she interrupted, sitting down on the bed. "Aleksander's already promised to take care of it."

He paused at that. Frowned. "The Supreme Chancellor?"

She nodded.

He sat down hard on the bed alongside her. "Isn't he supposed to be impartial?"

"He's a sentient being, Nikolai," she told him, giving him an odd look. "He's the head of the jury, yes, he's supposed to consider both sides, but he knows that the situation on Jakku, and the _reason_ they joined the CIS in the first place, won't be considered valid evidence at the trial. But it's important to how people perceive what Mal did."

"I'm not disagreeing-"

" _He_ knows the situation, and it informs his opinion that Mal doesn't deserve to die; he's just going to make sure the rest of the jury know, so it also informs _their_ opinion." She folded her hands behind her back. "I'm sure they'll make the right choice."

"I know, but even so. . ." He paused. "The jury isn't supposed to go in already with their minds made up. That's fundamentally undemocratic."

She pinched her lips together and looked down. "It is," she admitted, "but so is everything else about this. So is the reason that as a suspected terrorist, Mal has apparently lost the right to be represented in the court, so he doesn't even have an expert to plead his case. Everything about this is undemocratic. The deck is always going to be stacked." She looked up, and met his eye again. "All we can do is make sure it's stacked in our favour."

Nikolai's stomach sunk at the words. He wasn't even sure what it was about them that bothered him, just that they felt like something big.

Like the beginning of the end.

He opened his mouth to say as much, to object to this, but that wasn't what came out. If it had been, things might have turned out differently.

But it wasn't, and they didn't.

"I see," he said instead, although he really couldn't see. He couldn't see anything anymore, not really - since the start of the war, the future had been clouded, and he no longer knew what lay ahead. "You're putting a lot of faith in the Chancellor. You really trust him?"

She gave him a droll look. They'd had _that_ conversation before. "Yes. He's a great man, barely older than you and me. _And_ he's a Jedi. Why don't _you_ trust him?"

Oh no. She was getting defensive now, accusatory. If he didn't tread carefully, he'd say something that meant she wouldn't trust him again.

Even if he _didn't_ trust the Chancellor. Even if he didn't like how a man meant to be a religious warrior's perspective in a debate had become the leader of that debate, the physical embodiment of the Republic's dependence on the Jedi. Even if, as the war went on, the man had hoarded executive power after executive power until he controlled the war, and could theoretically commandeer the entire Republic if he felt like it, _in the name of peace._

Funny, how every perfectly rational conversation they had about the Chancellor seemed to risk tearing them apart.

So he brought up an old running joke between them. "Of course not. He's a politician. Politicians should never be trusted."

" _You're_ a politician," she pointed out, as she always did, now more amused than annoyed.

"Not me," he snorted, affecting a pompous air. " _I_ am the _epitome_ of trustworthiness."

She laughed. "And I'm a Sith Lord," she drawled back at him. He laughed as well, but oddly enough, he didn't find that quite as funny as he used to.

* * *

Alina wasn't allowed into the courtroom next to Mal, or to stand with him during the trial. She was barely allowed to be a witness, since she wasn't a Jedi Master, and didn't sit on the council. But after a lot of arguing, and pleading, and negotiating, Aleksander had managed to get her a seat among the Jedi Masters in the higher tiers of the courtroom, looking down on Mal as he was ushered in, his hands clamped in binders in front of him. The doors were guarded by Temple guards, impeccable in their white and yellow armour, full-face helmets and yellow-bladed pike lightsabers - was one of them David? she wondered - but Mal himself was escorted by four clone troopers wearing blue and white armour.

The 212th.

Zoya's Legion.

Turned out they had been given control of security on Coruscant, after all.

Alina glanced around the alcove the Jedi sat in. Zoya had been promoted to Master during the war; by all rights, she could - _should_ \- be here. But she'd chosen not to be. Supposedly, she was too busy training her new padawan.

Zoya wasn't here in Alina's hour of need because of that brat.

It made Alina hate the padawan a little more.

The courtroom was similar to the Senate Chamber in that it was circular, and the floor was fathoms below them, the overseers and jury seated on balconies and alcoves in the walls, the guards and accused standing on a walkway that extended into the middle of the room. Mal was ushered along that walkway, glancing up at all the eyes staring at him, until he'd reached the end and was pushed onto the small platform that hovered there.

The moment he was sturdy on it, it floated into the dead centre of the room, a good two metres away from any balconies or walkways on either side. He had no escape.

Alina saw him glance up at the higher tiers, scanning the crowds; she tried to catch his eye.

She failed. He lowered his gaze again not noticing her.

Thinking he was alone.

She thought of the battered but beloved music box she'd been given on the trip here, exactly the same as the one she remembered from so long ago. Why had he kept it?

Why had he been able to show her that devotion, when she couldn't show him any now?

She looked away, eyes stinging. Nikolai, seated among a handful of senators who'd been permitted to watch, tried to give her a reassuring smile.

She was glad he was here. She was very glad he'd decided to come.

The Vice Chancellor struck his sceptre three times against the floor of their podium. Aleksander stepped up to his spot on the dais, far enough above and in front of Mal that he had to crane his neck, and began his speech. The red-robed guards of the Chancellor shifted behind him as he said, "Malyen Oretsev. You have been charged with terrorism, the kidnapping of a Republic senator, attempted murder of a Jedi, and treason against the Republic itself. This court will decide your fate."

Stately, neutral words - he'd told her he couldn't be seen to favour one side or the other, or it would be undemocratic, but he certainly wasn't going to make it look like he favoured a sentence of guilt.

"The prosecution may now begin their arguments."

The door to one of the walkways, on Mal's left, slid open, and two men walked in. The prosecution.

Alina leaned forward.

One of the men was Retvenko, she recognised, still touting his arm around in a ridiculous sling even if it was almost definitely healed by now. The other man she didn't recognise: taller, greyer, with thin lips and a thin smile.

He reached the end of the walkway, and stood there silently for a moment before he began to speak.

"This man, Malyen Oretsev, is a known Separatist." His voice rang out, loud and insistent and damning. "He is a native to the planet which aided and abetted the escape of many Separatist fleets, providing fuel and aid to them in defiance of their rightful government, and, more recently, was directly involved in the kidnapping and torture of a Republic senator."

Alina's gaze flicked to Nikolai; he went pale at the words.

"Jakku was a member of the Republic, a cherished friend to whom major Republic systems sent aid to for many, many years," he continued, "only to turn their backs on us - no, stab _us_ in the back - in a heartbeat! This man," he turned to point at Mal, "this uncultured, ungrateful _scavenger_ , represents all that was wrong with his planet, and it is my sincerest belief that he should get the same justice the rest of the traitors did!"

There was something ugly in his voice and words. There was something ugly, Alina knew, in the Republic itself. It was why the Separatists had wanted to leave in the first place. It was the bloated corpse of democracy, with rich, powerful, cold, callous, apathetic, _monstrous_ politicians uncaring about the needs of the systems they claimed to hold so dear. The elitism in the room was stifling.

Looking back, Alina knew that that was the moment she knew two things:

One: that Mal was going to die.

And two: she did not believe in this government anymore.

The man kept talking. "My witness to these events will corroborate the matter."

Alina could barely watch as Retvenko stepped up to the podium, as he started talking, describing everything, from the attack on Niima Outpost to the injury he'd received and the "malicious assault of the Jedi who'd so graciously saved his life." She wanted to be sick.

"I recognise that there may be doubts about the accuracy and reliability of this information, since my witness freely admits to having only heard of most of the events that occurred, so much of it may be hearsay," the thin-lipped man continued. "So, I present to you my other witness," he paused for dramatic effect, "Senator Lantsov himself!"

Silence fell. Every eye turned towards Nikolai, who'd whitened even further. Alina had a lump in her stomach, growing heavier by the moment.

Interview Nikolai? When he was sworn to only tell the truth, in a room with a bunch of beings who could tell if he was lying?

Suddenly, Alina wasn't so glad that he'd decided to come after all.

* * *

Lying could ruin his career.

Nikolai knew this, and knew he'd been put on the spot for a reason. He'd declined speaking as a witness at the trial because of this, trying to claim he was still recovering from his capture, but he'd decided to come and watch in the end, because Alina needed the support.

He wished he'd followed Tamar's example. She'd managed to get herself, Tolya, and the rest of the 501st reassigned to be far away from Coruscant almost immediately after they'd arrived on-planet. She wouldn't be back for several months, but at least she couldn't be questioned, and made to betray Alina.

He didn't want to betray Alina.

But lying would ruin his career.

He should've just agreed to testify. Then he could've built up a reasonable lie, built up shields and practiced until no one, not even a Jedi, could tell he was lying. Then he - and Mal - would've made it away blameless and scot-free.

But there was no use dwelling on his mistakes. What mattered was the here and now.

And here and now, any lie he told would be detected. He didn't have the practice, couldn't disguise it. Nor could he refuse to testify, now that he'd shown up, or he would be seen as dishonest for that as well. And he couldn't risk himself, a talented up-and-coming politician, getting caught being dishonest in a court of justice. It would destroy his career - the career he was using to do good in the galaxy, spread Naboo's wealth and good fortune as far as he possibly could.

And his friendship with Alina, no matter how comfortable, no matter how close, wasn't worth jeopardising that.

* * *

Nikolai had disappeared from his pod and was presumably moving down the corridors outside to meet Retvenko and the thin-lipped man in the walkway. He wasn't refusing to testify.

Why wasn't he refusing to testify?

 _Because it would make him look dishonest, untrustworthy. He's a politician._

 _Politicians are obsessed with looking trustworthy._

She knew what was coming next. When he appeared on the walkway so far below, it felt like there was a band squeezing her chest tighter and tighter. Her blaster wound throbbed.

"Could Senator Lantsov please step up to the witness podium," Aleksander said, voice tight. He didn't seem to like this anymore than she did.

Nikolai followed the instructions, and turned his face towards the Chancellor's dais, like a flower blooming towards the sun. In the light that filtered down, through the dust motes and the shadows, the bruising on his face was cast into stark relief; Alina heard and sensed more than a few gasps of horror at the idea of a respected senator being abused in such a barbaric way.

She didn't know the specifics of court laws, but she wasn't sure this was legal. Calling on a witness who'd decided not to testify, using the threat of social, political and economic repercussions to convince him to say what they wanted him to say. . . It couldn't be legal. _Shouldn't_ be legal.

Because that was what they were doing. She knew that all too well. If Nikolai continued to refuse to testify, he'd be seen as dishonest, or as hiding something.

As _untrustworthy_.

She didn't know if this was legal. She didn't want to think this was legal.

But she trusted Aleksander, and Aleksander had studied the constitution inside out. If he wasn't objecting to it, then it must be allowed. If he wasn't stopping it, there must be no way of stopping it.

So she settled back to watch.

"Senator Lantsov," the thin-lipped man greeted, giving a forced smile as he stalked around the podium. Nikolai kept his back straight, ostensibly unfazed. "Shall we begin with a full recount of what exactly happened while you were in captivity."

"Certainly," Nikolai said, a jovial smile on his face. He leaned forward, elbows on the podium, and rested his chin in his hands, his expression one of the utmost attention. He didn't say anything for a solid minute.

The lawyer cleared his throat. "Senator Lantsov, can you please recount your captivity for the court."

"Oh!" The exaggerated look of shock Nikolai wore was comical; several people, including _Mal_ , on his spot on the platform, chuckled. It made Alina feel a little better. "I didn't realise you meant for _me_ to give it. Anyway. . ." He cleared his throat, then paused.

The lawyer blinked expectantly.

Nikolai cleared his throat again.

"Excuse me," he said quietly, voice suddenly much graver. "It was a traumatic experience, I'm sure you understand. It may not be easy for me to talk about."

"All we require," the thin-lipped man said through gritted teeth, "is that you talk about it."

Nikolai bowed his head slightly. "Of course." He lifted his chin. "It started when I was on a relief mission to Takodana."

Quiet fell in the courtroom; everyone listened, wanting to hear what he was going to say.

"You all know why I was there, and what was to occur; all the minutiae of it were agonised over and approved by the Senate before I left. We were well into the second day of the relief mission before the attack came. Those pink droids swept through the forest, vulture droids swept over and bombed the castle we were using as a base of operations." He swallowed and said, even more quietly, "All those people, dead. I- I was lucky to escape alive."

He was silent, apparently, for just a touch too long, because then the lawyer asked, "And what happened next?"

"I fled into the woods, but two of the Separatists' battle droids saw me, and contacted a battalion to give chase. I had my blaster, but it was running out of charge, and I was against thousands of droids with heat sensor scanners and blasters of their own. I didn't stand a chance. They captured me, and I overheard one of the Separatist generals give the order that I was to be taken to Onderon. However, it was at this time that Republic clones from a nearby outpost received my call for help, and arrived in starfighters. They gave chase, and the ship was forced to stop on Jakku, a well-known Separatist refuelling stop.

"There, I was captured and held by local scavengers on behalf of the battle droids while they tried to fix and refuel the ship. I don't know how long I was a captive."

"Did you speak to any of the _scavengers_ guarding you?" The thin-lipped man said the word with a pronounced sneer of disdain.

Nikolai hesitated slightly. It was barely noticeable, but it was there. "Yes," he admitted. "I was delirious on lack of sleep and pain from the injuries I sustained, and I was taunting them - or, at least, I was trying to. I spoke to them, and I think one of them spoke back."

"Was it this man?" The lawyer gestured to Mal, still on the platform. "Do you recognise him as one of your captors."

Nikolai hesitated again, and Alina's heart plummeted. _That's a yes, then_. "It was dark," he said carefully, looking anywhere but at the man, "and, as I've said, I was delirious. Therefore, I cannot say with any accuracy-"

"Do you believe this man was the Separatist who held you captive and, when faced with arrest, tried to kill General Starkiller, and who is therefore guilty of terrorism, treason against the Republic, kidnapping and the attempted murder of a Jedi?"

Nikolai opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I-"

"A simple yes or no will suffice, Senator."

Nikolai glared. "I _will_ -"

" _Enough_!"

The shout was loud and vehement enough to convey its own sort of authority. Alina instinctively looked up at Aleksander when she heard it, but it wasn't him; she met his gaze, and he looked just as confused as she felt.

Then they heard the shout again. "That is _enough_!"

It was Mal.

"For fuck's sake, I am _sick_ of all this grandstanding," he seethed. "Yes, I'm a Separatist. Yes, Jakku was Separatist. Yes, I kidnapped Senator Lantsov and nearly murdered Alina Starkiller." His voice broke on her name. "But all of this _pretending_ , this _manipulation_ , you posh sods are so fond of, is _exactly why we Separatists wanted to leave the Republic in the first place_."

Shouting broke out. Alina knew Aleksander was trying to catch her gaze, but she closed her eyes rather than let him.

This. . . this was chaos.

In all of her attempts to navigate political bullshit so she could save Mal, she'd overestimated his own abilities to withstand that same bullshit.

Aleksander was trying to pull their own sorry backsides out of the wreckage, the Vice Chancellor banging his sceptre on the ground and shouting. "Order! We _shall_ have order!"

"No," Mal kept saying, "you will _not_."

"The Accused is not permitted to speak-"

"I don't care!" Mal shouted. "I am guilty! Pronounce me guilty! Execute me! But it will _not_ change the fact," he panted, "that we are _sick_ of this. We poor, lowly _scavengers_ that bow and scrape and beg for scraps from your oh-so-generous hands are royally tired of you sitting on your high seats and acting like you're better than us, and one of these days, _it will all change_.

"And you, _Chancellor_ ," he spat, whirling to face Aleksander. "One day, the galaxy you rule like your own personal Empire will rise up against you, and no one will come to save you when it does." Something lurched in Alina at the words, the Force trying to tell her something. . . But it faded soon enough, and she was left in the dark. "I only wish I could be there to see it."

Aleksander's face was a rictus of anger for half a heartbeat, then he'd smoothed it to a passionless expression again. "Troopers," he said calmly, "stun him." He took a deep breath, then said, "He will be slated for execution-"

"No." Mal cut him off. "I won't be another executed revolutionary. I won't be another headless corpse on the Republic's doorstep."

"Then what will you be?" Aleksander spat at him, all decorum and procedure thrown out the window with Mal's outburst. It unnerved Alina, seeing the two men she loved so unhinged, hating each other so much.

Mal lifted his chin and, for the first time in his life, he had dignity. "A martyr," he said.

In his ranting, he'd moved closer and closer to the edge of the platform. By now, all he had to do was take a step, and he fell.


	9. Episode IX

**Sorry if there are any typos - this chapter's really long and i don't have the time for a thorough proofread.**

 **Also, just as a heads up, the next chapter will be the last. Everything goes to shit right about now.**

* * *

Alina hadn't left the Jedi Temple since Mal died.

She hadn't been ordered to rejoin the Soldat Sol, wherever they were in the Outer Rim - apparently the sieges were going well under Tamar's leadership - so instead she just. . . stagnated. Kept replaying the moment of Mal's fall over and over in her head.

She could've caught him.

She could've caught him, if she'd reached out.

But she been too surprised, conflicted.

She hadn't reached out.

And now-

 _Now_ -

Now Mal was dead.

She'd spent a long time in her room, searching through her meagre belongings for the music box they'd retrieved from Jakku. But she couldn't find it, and she had a sinking feeling it'd been removed from her quarters. She had nothing to remember Mal with.

She had nothing, and she would _never_ have anything to remember Mal with, because _Mal was dead._

The sentence rang inside her head day in, day out. She wandered the very depths of the Jedi Temple in an attempt to run away from it, but the deeper she got, the echoes only got stronger, until they were shouts. Shouts in a familiar voice, tone, cadence, the furious ranting of a man on death row. . .

But Mal's voice wasn't the only thing she found down there. She wandered down passages no one trespassed, if only because no one would find her there, and she soon found why. As attuned to the Force as she was, she'd always felt slightly. . . uneasy. . . in the Temple, which was part of the reason why she was always so happy to go off and fight the war on such distant planets. The further down she went, that uneasiness then became a queasiness, then a headache, until her head pounded and her throat was dry and she was so _uncomfortable_ here.

Every time, she considered returning to the surface.

Every time, she reminded herself that she deserved this, she _deserved this pain-_

Because Mal was dead. And he was never coming back.

She was distantly aware that Nikolai had refused interviews to speak on the matter, that after that disaster of a trial Aleksander had been given even more exclusive executive powers as the Chancellor to control the war effort, but she wasn't paying any real attention. She didn't care enough to.

So she kept wandering, which was how she came across the holocron.

She knew what holocrons were, of course; the Jedi used them often to record specific teachings or data. Essentially datachips that only users of the Light Side of the Force could open, they worked well as records for information meant only for the eyes of Jedi.

But this one was different. Instead of being a cube, as most Jedi holocrons were, it was a triangular-based pyramid, with a harsh red glow in place of the Jedi's gentle blue. And it _felt_ different as well, the way these lower passages below the temple felt so different to the Temple itself: cold where there should be warmth, chaos where there should be harmony. . .

Anger and hate where there should be love.

There was a deadness inside her when she reached out for it with her hand, the metal framework of it cool to the touch. It cast her hand in a bloody glow, and for a moment she felt something. . . _click_ inside her. Like the key turning in a lock. The chaotic cold she felt in the holocron crept down her fingertips, fingers, hand, numbing the skin and muscles - leaving her frozen in place. Had she been in any other mindset at that moment, she might've drawn back in horror at what she was feeling.

But she wasn't, so she didn't, and her eyes didn't widen, her hands didn't shake, her chest didn't constrict as that deathly cold reached inside her ribcage and clutched at her beating heart.

For a moment, all was still.

She breathed out. The Force bunched and flowed around her with the motion, down her arm. Towards the holocron, the little triangular studs at each of its vertices and twisting them, twisting them. . .

The holocron opened with a quiet hiss.

She opened her eyes, unsure when she'd closed them in the first place. The holocron was glowing brighter now, its colour deeper than human blood, but no hologram was projected from it, no data stored on it.

Then a voice came out of it - a recording! - and the voice was familiar to her, dear. Almost like-

"Alina!"

She whirled round, strangely guilty, but quickly relaxed. It was just Aleksander.

Of course it was Aleksander. He was the only one who bothered to talk to her nowadays, with Nikolai busy and Zoya busy and everyone in the Jedi Temple shunning her for her imbalance. She wasn't sure how the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic found the time when nobody else could, but somehow, he did. He was even the one who originally suggested she wander the tunnels under the Temple in the first place, as something to do while she "recovered."

"Aleksander," she said, voice unnaturally high. She winced, half at the sound of it, half at the look on his face as his eyes fell on the open holocron.

"Is that a _Sith holocron_?" he asked incredulously. "And you managed to open it?" She nodded slowly. "Only people who use the Dark Side can open those things. Alina-"

She flinched back. "I'm sorry-"

"-this is _amazing_."

She blinked. "What?"

"Is this research?" he asked, apparently oblivious to her confusion. "I assume my mother told you about her suspicions about this war. Are you researching the Dark Side, how it works? Because that would be _incredibly_ useful-"

"Aleksander," she cut him off. " _What_ are you talking about?"

He froze. "You don't know?" His mouth was agape. "I was sure - of all people - Baghra would tell you. You're meant to destroy the Sith. You're the _Chosen One_."

She flinched again; she _really hated_ that title. "Tell me _what_ ," she reiterated, a slight snap to her voice.

"Baghra thinks the Clone Wars were orchestrated by a Sith Lord. Specifically, the one whose apprentice you killed on Jakku all those years ago."

Alina's hand drifted to the lightsabers at her belt. "I didn't kill him."

"Semantics." He waved the point away. "Either way, how many Jedi have died in this war? It's suspicious - _especially_ with the Dark Side clouding _everything._ She thinks the Sith are to blame."

 _Of course she does_. Every time something bad happened with the Force, the Jedi were convinced it had to be the Sith. The rest of the time, they were too busy adamantly denying that the Sith still existed at all.

But she had to admit, there _was_ some logic to this. . .

She shook her head; there was too much confusion here, too much conflict. She flicked her wrist and the holocron snapped closed. Aleksander barely flinched.

She turned to him. "Wild theories aside," she said, letting her irritation rise to the surface, "why did you come down here? Do you need me for something?"

Aleksander shook his head. "No, I just. . . I came to check on you. Genya's worried about you, and so am I. Especially with the tension in the Force."

She frowned. "What tension?"

He glanced at her, startled. "You mean, you haven't felt it? You're more powerful in the Force than anyone I know. I thought you'd-"

"I've been cut off from the Force, mainly," she said dryly. "It's unsettling, using it down here."

Aleksander shivered, glancing around the darkness of the passages and the unused chambers. "I'm inclined to agree," he admitted, "but even so, can you just. . . try? I'm sure it's nothing, but I'd feel better if someone as powerful as you are corroborated that."

She frowned, the usual words - _I'm not that powerful_ \- rising to her lips, but she quashed them down. She could do this. It was just a favour to an old friend - a friend who actually _cared_ about her - and it wouldn't hurt to try and peer into the future with the Force for the first time in the months since _. . ._

Since. . .

Her probe was brought up short by what she found.

What she wasn't surprised by was the amount of darkness that clouded these hallways. She'd felt, in her headaches and stomach aches and uneasiness, that something about the lower passages was very different to that of the Temple above them. Nor was she surprised to find that Aleksander was right about the threat that was coming, the tension in the Force.

What surprised her was that the threat wasn't coming-

The threat was _here_.

Her eyes snapped open. "We need to get to the Senate Rotunda. Now."

He just looked surprised. "But-"

" _Aleksander_ ," she met his gaze head on, " _they're going to blow up the Senate._ "

* * *

They got to the Senate in record time, Alina maybe flying slightly faster than the traffic laws of Coruscant allowed. She didn't care.

This was _important_.

Still attuned to the minutiae of the Force and its warnings, Alina knew not to bother trying to park enter the Senate using the front doors; instead she zipped round the side, Aleksander next to her letting out a quiet curse at the speeds she was flying at, and round to one of the maintenance corridors. She left it idling, practically jumping from the vehicle to the rickety walkway round the side of the wall, and the door marked _authorised personnel only_ swung open readily at a brief, hurried nudge from the Force.

The Force, which still felt strangely tainted, still felt cold and dark and _angry_ , but she couldn't think about that right now because for all of its faults it was giving her the clarity she needed to see that the threat, this _pathetic, disgusting_ intrusion, the thing that dared defile the only planet she'd ever called home that was still alive, that hadn't been _pacified_ , the thing that wanted to harm the government she was sworn to protect-

It was telling her that the threat was-

The threat was right in front of her.

She barrelled down the hallway, into the maintenance corridors, the latent _snap-hiss_ of her lightsabers a second thought. She didn't need her lightsabers yet, she could sense that much, and she could sense life forms and dead ends with enough certainty that she knew she wasn't going to run into anything in the dark.

She didn't know what that holocron had unleashed in her, what _she_ had unleashed by opening it, but for the first time in _ages_ , maybe _forever_ , she felt. . .

Powerful.

She vaulted over a Rodian worker wandering the corridors, quickly leaving his cries of protest that _she wasn't allowed in here_ behind as she turned another corner, then another, that sure certainty in her heart and mind guiding her. She was almost startled at the difference it made, using all the anger and fear she'd felt for so long to spur her on. It made her more reckless, she could tell as she vaulted over another worker in a leap she could never have accomplished before, but only because she knew now that _she could do it_. It was. . . liberating.

The Jedi preached against using anger, hatred, fear while touching the Force. They demanded that Alina shed all attempts at being a sentient being and bottle up her anger. They'd denied her this power, the one she felt at her fingertips, and she-

And she hated them for it.

She _deserved_ this. She was the Chosen One; this sort of power was her birthright. And now, she would use it to crush this insignificant Separatist terrorism.

She was getting closer to the control centre now, what she knew the Separatists' target would be, and she felt. . . _something._ Something important.

She jerked her head up, glancing around. The corridor branched into two directions; the control centre was along the left, but along the right there was a- a-

A clonetrooper.

A clonetrooper who was about to make a terrible mistake.

She veered down the right corridor, flat out sprinting, her lightsabers swinging wildly and trailing sparks wherever they collided with the walls.

She could see the clonetrooper up ahead now, see him waving what looked like cleaning droids past what she knew was the final checkpoint between the outside of the building and the control room. She didn't bother to stop running before she shouted.

"Stop! Don't let them past!"

The trooper almost jumped out of his skin but, to his credit, he didn't hesitate once he'd seen the lightsabers that meant she knew what she was talking about. He turned sharply to the droids. "Hey! You there, wait!"

The droids didn't stop; instead, they did something worse. They kept moving, only now the metal plating around their body, like the carapaces on bugs' backs, lifted up slightly, and a loud ticking echoed through the hall.

 _Oh no-_

The trooper did a double take, his fear spiking in the Force, but Alina didn't hesitate. She leapt at the first droid, slashing her lightsabers down; it fell into three smoking pieces. There were six droids in total; five slashes later, she was done.

Breathing hard, she turned to look back at where the trooper had already knelt down to examine the insides of the droids. "Bombs," he confirmed grimly, looking up at her. "They would have blown up the Senate."

She took a deep breath, nodding slowly, then-

 _"Alina!"_

She turned to see Aleksander running to catch up with her, panting from the exertion. His robes were in disarray, his hair plastered to his head with sweat, but he took in the situation surprisingly quickly and adeptly, eyes skirting over the clonetrooper, her, her lightsabers, then to the destroyed droid bombs on the floor.

"Chancellor!" said the trooper, snapping to attention, but Aleksander ignored him.

"I contacted my mother," he told Alina. "She and the Jedi know about the attack; they're on their way down here."

There was an urgent tone to his voice, he was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't-

Wait.

She glanced down at her hands, and felt the adrenaline - along with that lingering cold - drain out of her.

She'd used the Dark Side.

Alina wanted to throw up. She'd _used_ the _Dark Side_ , and now Baghra and the other Jedi were coming, and she-

"Okay," she said, half to herself. "Okay. I'm ready."

How could she have done this? How could she have thought it felt good?

 _What was she doing?_

"I'm ready," she repeated, as if saying it would make it true.

It didn't. When she was arrested and taken into custody in the Jedi Temple for being seen as "a threat to the Republic's safety", a _Separatist colluder_ , she wasn't ready for it at all.

* * *

Zoya didn't understand what was going on.

Just this morning, she'd been grouching to herself about how much she missed teaching Alina, about how _arrogant_ and flat out _annoying_ Nina Zenik was in comparison, and now-

Alina had used the _Dark Side_?

She didn't understand it. She _couldn't_ understand it.

Alina was. . . Alina was the Chosen One. Even on Jakku, with no knowledge of the dangers and moralities of using the Force, she'd stretched for the Light Side, shunned the Dark, known instinctively that Zoya was good and the Sith Lord had been bad. So how had she reached for the Dark Side by _accident_ , without conscious knowledge?

Even Nina, for all of her belligerence and arrogance and impatience, wouldn't reach for the Dark Side on instinct. So why would Alina?

And there was a thought: _Nina_. And Zoya herself. Now that Alina was considered tainted, Fallen, would blame be placed on the person who'd trained her?

Would she lose her hard-earned place on the Council, her rank as a Jedi Master, her new padawan?

Zoya had been told to attend an emergency meeting of the masters, so attend it she did. But she sat through it in a stunned silence all the way: through the summary of the events, the clone's account of how Alina's eyes had apparently flashed yellow as she destroyed the droids, the new level of hero worship of Alina that had started just after the event, about how _the Hero With No Fear saves us all again_ , and. . .

And how Alina had broken down at the end of it and confessed everything.

There was a holorecording, taken by one of the Jedi who'd been dispatched to deal with her, of her confession. Zoya flinched while she was listening to it. Alina's voice was strained and broken, she dissolved into screams and tears at the end of it; it was hideous to listen to. That her old padawan had done this, that _Alina_. . .

Alina was now tainted.

"How did we know to send Jedi to subdue her? That she'd touched the Dark Side?" one of the Jedi Masters asked.

"Aleksander was the one who reported it," Baghra said, pursing her lips. "He called it in at the same time as he did the attack on the Senate."

The Jedi who'd spoken - a Cerean with a long, pale face - frowned. "Should we not interview him, then? See how much he knows about the situation?"

Murmurs ran around the room. "If the Jedi were to forcibly interrogate the Supreme Chancellor, no matter the circumstances. . ." one person pointed out, the political implications of that clear.

Baghra raised her hand, and the murmurs died down."I shall speak to Aleksander," she said. "It won't seem strange, a mother talking to her son. We can avoid any negative ramifications that way."

"Good idea."

It was Zoya, though, who brought up the point no one seemed to be addressing: "What are we going to do about Alina?"

"We've locked her in her room in the Jedi Temple."

Zoya glared at Baghra. "Locking her in only ostracises her. You know full well she can escape that room. What do you hope to gain?"

"Starkiller will meditate on what happened and purge the darkness from her," Baghra said simply - carefully. "Once she has been clean for long enough, this council will decide to reinstate her into the Order."

 _Clean._ Like it was a drug, or spice.

"In the meantime," Baghra added, "we will strive to make it easier to return to the light, and avoid sharing information that may antagonise her."

Zoya glared harder. _Information that may antagonise her_ was a vague definition that could stretch to encompass nearly anything, from the war effort to Force theology to whatever food the Temple kitchens were serving. "So, we're not going to tell her anything about the outside world."

" _Especially_ not that it was Aleksander who reported her," Baghra said. "She's already dealt with the fallout of the trial, and how she lost her friends Oretsev and Lantsov because of it. Feeling betrayed by another she considers a friend is the last thing she needs right now."

As if Baghra was worried about Alina's wellbeing.

But there was nothing Zoya could do. So, it was with a heavy heart that when Baghra say "All in favour of keeping Starkiller imprisoned for now, say aye," she was one of the many, _many_ people in the room who said it.

* * *

Alina's room was as stark and utilitarian as any other Jedi's, with the white chair, desk and cot offset by the slightly gold light that streamed through the window. Said light had to filter through the blinds before it did, so when it hit Alina's face it did so in straight lines, a pattern painted on her face like a Pantoran's tattoos.

Or the shadows of the bars of a cage.

It was quiet here. Alina herself hadn't made a sound other than her own breathing since she was tossed in here, and the distant hum of the speeders zooming by outside was drowned out by the hiss of breath. The air was as still as it had been since the click of the lock had stopped echoing.

Not that it had ever really stopped. It still played, over and over again, on the inside of Alina's head. _We don't trust you_ , it said. _We never did. And now we never will._

She sensed more than heard the footsteps that approached her door. They paused just before they reached it, as if they were going to turn off the corridor before passing her, but there was enough turmoil - and disgust - in the life form approaching that they were probably coming to her.

The footsteps resumed, and the door was opened again with another harsh _click_ , the well-oiled hinges soundless as they swung forward; only the rush of air heralded Nadia's arrival.

Alina blinked. Nadia was one of the other Jedi Knights in the temple, about her age; she and her friend Marie bunked down the hall. They'd tried to make friends with her originally, but after months of shyness on Alina's part and glares on Zoya's, they'd backed off, leaving a cordial, untouched tension between them.

Nadia met her gaze now, blue eyes hard, lips pressed tightly together. When Alina made no move to attack her, she strode in, shoved the plate of food clutched in her hands onto the desk with a clatter, then turned to face her sharply. If one had needed any proof about how deeply entrenched the Republic's military was in the Jedi Order, or vice versa, they need only look at her posture as she turned to face Alina: sharp and straight, like a clone standing to attention against some deadly droid.

"Your dinner," she said curtly. She nodded to the window, the amber light streaming through it. "It's sunset."

Alina nodded. She wasn't hungry.

"Did Master Baghra send you to deliver it?" she asked quietly.

Nadia nodded, lips still twisted into a faint sneer as she looked at her. Alina knew what she was thinking.

 _Dark Side. Tainted._

 _Fallen._

She said, just as quietly and politely as before, "Is there anything else?"

Nadia pursed her lips together, then glanced outside, to where Alina now noticed through the open door a cleaner's trolley parked there.

"By unanimous decision of the council, you're to be held in solitary confinement until they decide to let you out," Nadia said, voice flat and monotonous. "During this time, you're ordered to meditate on what happened, purge the darkness from yourself. You will also do your part to aid the war effort while your troops remain off Coruscant by taking apart the droids you destroyed and investigating the sort of machinery that allowed them to get so far past our defences. Your mechanical skill should come in useful for this."

Alina nodded again, glancing outside to the trolley. Sure enough, the silver carapaces of the droids gleamed in the amber light. "Is there anything else?"

Nadia looked momentarily unnerved by her docility, but she shook her head. "That will be all."

Alina bowed her head. "Then thank you. Have a nice evening. May the Force be with you."

Nadia still seemed wary, as though she thought Alina was trying to get her to lower her guard and take the chance to escape, but Alina didn't drop her gaze. She just smiled beatifically at her.

That was what made her snap. "What is _wrong_ with you?" Nadia shouted the question. "You touched the Dark Side! You're so _attached_. How dare you act like a respectable Jedi?"

Alina's smile froze on her face. "Many respectable Jedi are hypocritical enough to be attached themselves," she said coldly. "And don't tell me you haven't noticed; you're not thick. How are Sergei and Marie, for that matter?" She took some pleasure in how Nadia stopped breathing at the accusation, because she laid on the detail, "Or you and Tamar?"

Nadia stamped her foot; the plate on the desk clattered, a couple of peas rolled off and onto the floor. "How _dare_ -"

"You really think no one's noticed? You're not exactly subtle, the two of you; _every time_ you're both on Coruscant, you go missing. And it's not like it's only knights, either. Even Grandmaster _fucking_ Baghra fell in love with a man on Naboo, proceeding to give birth to and keep a son. The Jedi doctrine about attachment is pure hypocrisy, nothing more."

Nadia's nostrils flared. "The droid pieces are outside. Get them yourself when you want to; with all _your_ supposed skill and arrogance in the Force you ought to be able to undo one measly lock."

The door banged loudly when she marched out.

Alina sat back in her bed, breathing heavily. She eyed the plate for a moment, before dismissing the notion. She wasn't hungry. She was just tired.

Tired, and angry, and _frustrated_ -

She took a deep breath. She could feel the darkness in herself in a way she'd never felt it before, and it was wrapping itself round her heart, reeling her lungs. She took a few more breaths to try and dispel it, then sat up and crossed her legs. Closing her eyes and reaching for the warm, comforting folds of the Force, she tried to settle her mind into meditation.

She'd need it, need that peace; how long had Nadia said she would be here? _By unanimous decision of the council, you're to be held in solitary confinement until they decide to let you out._

She frowned, something tugging at her over those words. _By unanimous decision of the council. . ._

 _Unanimous decision. . ._

Her eyes flew open.

Zoya was on the Jedi Council.

 _Unanimous decision. . ._

Zoya had voted to imprison her?

Zoya had had so little faith in her, in her dedication to the light, had been so worried about her ambition and standing, that she'd turned on her?

Zoya had betrayed her?

Tears pricked her eyes. Alina let them fall; the peace she'd felt for those brief moments fell away with them. Instead there was a hard knot of emotions inside her, impossible to unpick, and she genuinely couldn't tell if she was crying out of sadness or anger.

It didn't matter. Either way, it _wasn't the Jedi way._

* * *

Genya had heard about Alina - was _worried_ about Alina - but she didn't have the time to try and visit her or comfort her. Aleksander had had her running around for days and days now; she wasn't sure what had happened in the war effort, but it seemed to have taken such a turn that there were suddenly infinite more clone armour and underwear to wash, gunships to repair, lightsabers to polish.

She'd barely been able to see David, who was still invested in some ritual he'd dug up about how to retain consciousness after life. He was holed up in the library; only Zoya had bothered to and was able to speak to him.

So she was in the corridors that surrounded the Chancellor's office when Baghra pushed past her to visit Aleksander - Genya scowled after her; grandmaster or not, she was a flat out rude woman - and she was in a small office adjacent to the Chancellor's main one, filing some files and printing some prints, when Baghra confronted him.

There was a door between this office and the Chancellor's; Genya wasn't stupid enough to be caught eavesdropping on the Chancellor's business, but it was Baghra herself who'd given her the job of knowing everything she could about the Jedi Order. You couldn't train a falcon and not expect it to hunt.

Confident she wouldn't get caught - after all, as a servant in the Jedi Temple, she'd been trained until no one could breach her mental shields, or even sense her - she pressed her ear to the door.

"Aleksander," Baghra said, "I need you to tell me everything that happened when Starkiller touched the Dark Side."

Aleksander didn't blink at his mother's sudden interest; he curled his lips into a bland smile and asked, "Of course, Mother, I'll answer any question of want. Although," he added, casting her a probing look, "I would've thought this would be an interview to be conducted in front of the whole council."

"I'm speaking on their behalf," Baghra said curtly, then, to Genya's surprise, turned towards the door. With a wave of her hand, it locked tight. "You read the transcript of Starkiller's confession, about a Sith holocron in the passages beneath the temple. The Jedi Temple was built in top of a Sith temple," she said, "as I'm sure you know. I'm wondering where she got the idea to go wondering in the only levels of it that survived."

"I'm as in the dark as you are, a mother," Aleksander said politely. "I'm afraid I have no idea. Did Alina not say _why_ she went down there?"

"No," Baghra said, "she didn't." She fixed Aleksander with a narrow gaze. "You're sure you don't know anything?"

He spread his hands wide, his Chancellor's robes splaying with the movement. "Absolutely nothing."

He was lying, Genya realised, tension building in the back of her throat. He was lying. She knew it, Baghra knew it, and Aleksander knew she knew it. _Wanted_ her to know it.

But. . . _Why?_

What was going on?

"Starkiller _did_ say that the voice recording that played when she opened the holocron sounded familiar," Baghra continued, eagle-eyes stare still fixed on him. "And the darkness in the Force has only grown worse these past few years - especially since you became Chancellor."

A coldness crept into the room then. Genya's arms prickled as goosebumps sprung up, but neither mother nor son moved, although Genya knew that if _she_ could feel it, two fully fledged Jedi Knights certainly could.

"You're starting to sound like a politician, Mother," Aleksander said, voice soft. "You're never one to mince words like this. So tell me," Genya sucked in a breath, feeling the tension in her throat build to painful levels, "what are you insinuating?"

Baghra lifted her chin. She was shorter than her son, Genya suddenly realised. Her withered old form was aged and brittle, hunched over, the staff she concealed her lightsaber in necessary for her to walk with. Aleksander, in comparison, was tall, strong, and in his prime.

It wasn't like it mattered, Genya tried to tell herself. It wasn't like they were going to fight, was it?

Then she heard what Baghra said, and her world shattered.

"Are you the Sith Lord who's been orchestrating this war?"

Aleksander didn't reply at first. He just reached out his right hand, even as his left went to his waist, and the lightsaber clipped there. He drew that, as another lightsaber flew to his hand from somewhere hidden in the room.

He weighed them both in his hands for a moment, then lit them simultaneously. The vibrant green of the first blade was painfully bright against the crimson of the second, and Genya thought her heart might stop beating.

"Yes," Aleksander said.

Baghra took a deep breath, but when she spoke, her voice had lost its usual apathy, its calm edge. Here, the edge was brittle, sharp, and ready to break.

"Why?" she asked simply, lifting her gaze from the lightsabers to his face. "We all loved you. You were our Lightling. And now. . ."

"I wanted more, Mother." His voice was clipped now in a way that was painfully familiar - how many times had Genya listened to him rant about politics with that same tone, that same controlled anger? It was frightening. "More than the Jedi could give me. I _was_ your Lightling. Now. . ." He shrugged. "Darkling, maybe? It has more of a ring to it."

The hum of a third lightsaber was unexpected, and caught Genya off guard. Baghra pulled her saber out of its sheath in her walking stick in one fluid motion, levelling the icy blue blade at her son.

Just from the look on her face, Genya knew Aleksander was in trouble.

"You're going to destroy us," Baghra said.

"I already have."

"I can't let that happen."

Aleksander gave her a small smile. "It already has."

He didn't give his mother any warning before he swung the red saber with all his might for her head, but she didn't need it. She caught the blow on her own blade and parried, then blocked the next succession of blows with relative ease.

"I taught you nearly everything you know," she reminded him. _Warned_ him.

He bared his teeth in a smile. "But not quite everything."

* * *

Alina kept trying to meditate, even despite her newfound turmoil, and perhaps that was why she sensed what was going on before anyone else did.

Then again, a part of her subconscious purred, perhaps it was this new power she'd tapped into, the clarity it leant her-

 _Focus._ That wasn't important right now. What was important was that she find out what the source of this disturbance was. She reached out-

And instantly recoiled. It was happening a short while away, in the Senate Rotunda, green and red and blue blades flashing and clashing, tearful screams and a hard, vengeful glee, and-

Her eyes snapped open.

Aleksander was in trouble.

She didn't stop to think about her precarious position with the Jedi Council, nor how she was going to get from the Jedi Temple to the Senate Rotunda in time. She wasn't thinking at all; it was instinct, and the shadow of that strange power, that ruled her as she unfolded her legs and shot to her feet like a striking snake.

But the lock on the door was strangely resistant to all her attempts at forcing it open, as was the Force resistant to her attempts to touch the Light Side. Still, there was another spike of terror and excitement in the Force, and Alina didn't bother wrestling with it; she dived right into the Dark Side, knowing it would answer her call, knowing it would do what she needed it to do, just this once.

Sure enough, the lock opened.

She was out of the room in a heartbeat and racing down the corridor. Her hands automatically reached for lightsabers that weren't at her hip - _of course they're not,_ that would be ridiculous for them to let a prisoner in all but name be _armed_ \- and she panicked for a moment. How was she supposed to help Aleksander without a saber?

"Hey!" someone shouted. Alina made the mistake of turning round, mind still heady with the Dark Side; it was Nadia, running down the corridor after her. "You're not supposed to-"

But it didn't matter, because now Alina's eyes had fixed on the green lightsaber lit in Nadia's hand as she barrelled to face her. _I need a weapon_. And there was one right in front of her.

Alina stretched out a hand. Maybe it was the Dark Side, maybe it was because she was the Chosen One, but it flew out of Nadia's hand easily and into Alina's.

Nadia was almost upon her when she snarled, "Give that _back_ -" so, really, it was just instinct for Alina to swing the blade.

It hummed as it sheared through Nadia's torso. The woman landed in two pieces in the corridor floor.

For a moment Alina was frozen in place - _I just killed her oh_ Force _I killed Nadia I'll get the death penalty for this_ I killed Nadia - then she sensed another spike of terror from Aleksander from the Force, and her fear fed the Dark Side, which swept in again, and she turned away.

Aleksander needed her.

So she ran off to find a speeder she could steal, even as smoke curled upwards from the two halves of Nadia's corpse on the floor.

* * *

Genya had fled the room the moment they started fighting. She didn't need to get caught in that, and she could take this time to gather her things and flee the temple; no matter what the outcome of that duel was, she knew, things would never be the same. She didn't want to stay here any longer.

She was still on her way out when she brushed through a storage room and saw Alina's twin lightsabers on the rack in the corner, no doubt where they'd been out while she was kept under arrest. After a moment's hesitation, Genya took them both, and slid them into her bag. She could give them back to her friend once everything had settled down.

There was also some sort of music box there - she thought that might be Alina's too. She took that as well.

She only had one satchel, and so many things she needed to take - not in the least the tree at the heart of the temple that she'd watered and loved for her whole life. But she would comm David later, ask him to bring stuff out.

She had no way of knowing that the stuff David would bring out would be everything he could rescue from the burning temple, or that the only way she would salvage her beloved tree was by cutting clippings from the branches that were thrown into the lower levels of Coruscant like so much rubbish after the Purges.

She didn't know any of that, so her heart was light as she left the temple, and she didn't look back.

* * *

The fight was fierce, mother and son bringing everything to bear against each other that they could. Baghra favoured defence while Aleksander favoured offence; perhaps as simply habits cultivated by their roles as Jedi and Sith, or perhaps it was that Baghra didn't really want to hurt her son, while Aleksander was out to kill his mother.

But Baghra, despite her considerable age, as well as the fact that her son was wielding two lightsabers against her one, was holding her own remarkably well.

Her breath hissed out between her teeth as she parried a particularly hard blow. "You fight too aggressively for a Jedi."

"I'm thrilled you noticed, Mother," Aleksander snapped back. "Because _I'm not one_."

"What do you hope to gain from all this?" Baghra asked. "You burn and torment and destroy everything, the Order, the galaxy, and for _what_? How did we wrong you so badly that you're willing to go to such lengths for revenge?" Their lightsabers clashed again; Baghra's voice was strangled into a cry. "What do you _want_?!"

"I want to erase the backwards ideals of the Jedi from existence, yes," Aleksander said. "But it's far simpler than a matter of ideology. The fact is that I want to rule the galaxy, and the Jedi Order is standing in my way." He drew his sabers back and took a breath, which only made his final exclamation more dramatic. "So I will be Emperor in a reality where the Sith rule, and your precious order is extinct."

"I will not let that happen."

He smiled again. He'd been smiling a lot recently, Baghra remembered, but this one wasn't one of his happy, wholesome smiles. It was a smirk, a leer, the cruel twist of the mouth shot to someone they knew they were going to win against.

He shrugged. "Everything you do only brings it closer," he said, and Baghra had never felt so helpless.

She'd never felt so helpless than when the order she'd dedicated her life to was on the brink of destruction, by a person who was a product of her own failings and attachments, and she didn't know how or why this was going to occur.

"It's Starkiller, isn't it?" she panted. "She's your trump card. You'll take her, and make her our destruction." She shook her head. "You won't have her."

He wasn't even smiling when Aleksander said simply, "I already do."

And what pushed her over the edge was because he was _right_. Because Starkiller had touched the Dark Side, he'd manipulated her into doing so, and all the friends she'd had in the Jedi Order had left her and she _hated_ Baghra and now, Aleksander was all she had left.

The only thing for Baghra to do was to take him from her as well.

So she reached inside of her, for the power she'd cultivated and coveted and cherished, but in her desperation, her anger, her fear, she went deeper.

If she hadn't gone deeper, she wouldn't have been able to shove him backwards with the Force, shattering the large window that spanned half the wall of the Chancellor's office and making him stumble back, and back, and back. . .

But she would rather have never gone that deep at all, the lingering stench of the Dark Side wrapping a cold shroud around her shoulders as her stomach dropped through the floor. She-

She just-

 _What had she done?_

It didn't matter. Because either way, she wouldn't go further than that. So she didn't push further, harder; she wouldn't have anything more to do with that power.

But as noble as that was, it was a mistake which would have dire consequences for the galaxy.

Because if she'd pushed him back another inch, he would've fallen down, out of the building, out of the skyscrapers, and down into the rain-soaked city so far below. She would've killed him.

But she didn't.

So Aleksander Morozova dragged himself into an upright position from where he'd been flung onto the last edge of the floor before oblivion, and laughed.

"So hypocritical, Mother," he chided. "Using the Dark Side? That's not the Jedi way."

But his eyes went wide when she approached him, because the reality was this: he had lost both his sabers in the fall. They were still tumbling beyond the shattered window, twin beams of light and colour amidst the gloom.

He was unarmed.

And he had the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order stalking towards him with her lightsaber lit, and the resolve to do what was necessary shining in her eyes.

This was the situation Alina Starkiller found him in when she approached.


	10. Episode X

The guilt still hounded her, nipping at her footsteps, as she ran, but she pushed it aside relatively easily. She could deal with it later.

Aleksander was in trouble.

So she had about as many qualms about stealing some random person's speeder to get to the Senate Rotunda as she did about killing Nadia, and it wasn't long at all until she was parking outside the main entrance and leaping out.

If she was anyone else, the clones and Senate Guards would've run towards her shouting that this was a public space, that she couldn't leave a speeder marked as stolen idling outside it, that she needed to leave or charges would be pressed. But she wasn't anyone else; she was Alina Starkiller, a well-known Jedi and General, who'd saved the Senate from a major attack less than a week before. They stood to attention immediately.

"The Chancellor is in danger," she said, hearing her voice lapse into the hard, clear voice she used to give orders to the Soldat Sol. "I'm going to his office; you sweep the area to uncover any threats."

"Yes, General," they said, without questioning what that threat was, or what she was going to do. Alina knew why: if the clones were serving on Coruscant, then they were a part of Zoya's legion, and her time as Zoya's padawan during the war had meant she was well aware of how little Zoya told her troops, or how much obedience she expected from them.

So she nodded at them, wondering if these clones were new, or if she'd served with them while she was with Zoya. But the thought was dismissed as quickly as it came; she had a job to do.

Aleksander was in trouble.

She ran through the Senate, crashing into and startling several senators as she did. She felt their fear peak in the Force as they no doubt wondered why she was running like wild gundarks were after her, but again, she paid it as much attention as she did Nikolai when he shouted, "Alina, are you-" when she barrelled past.

There were no red-robed guards outside the Chancellor's office when she approached, no security measures to stop her bashing the controls and having the door slide open; she had a bad feeling about this. . .

What was inside warranted it.

Aleksander was backed up against the window, but the window wasn't there. It was broken, her friend at risk of falling through empty space into the skies of Coruscant and onto the duracrete far, far below.

And Baghra was bearing down on him with her lightsaber lit and ready.

Alina didn't know what was going on. She didn't know why Baghra was going to kill her son, or _if_ she was even going to; she didn't know what to do or how to do it or if she _could_ do it. The Dark Side swirled around in her head along with her conflicted thoughts, and amidst the confusion there was only one clear path to take, perhaps the path only a true Jedi would take:

Deescalate the situation. As soon as possible.

So running forward, she lit her stolen lightsaber and swung it, desperate and worried and _scared_ -

It sheared through the bones and tendons in Baghra's wrist.

The woman howled, her arm pulled to her chest, teetering on the brink of the edge as her lost hand and the lightsaber it had been holding went tumbling into the skies.

Alina sucked in a breath. This was it. Baghra was weaponless, Aleksander was weaponless; now, no one would die, and they could talk out this situation like the (failing) democracy they were.

Only Aleksander wasn't weaponless.

Baghra was still teetering on the edge when he lifted his hands. Alina stepped forward - expecting, naturally, that he simply needed a hand up - but jerked back at the bolts of violet lightning that crackled as they fled his fingertips. Her eyes went wide.

She'd read about this: Force lightning.

But it was only used by the-

Only that didn't matter, because either way it struck Baghra clean in the chest, head, arms. Her howl from earlier was nothing compared to the scream she unleashed as she stumbled back, away from that horrible, horrible lightning, and fell.

And fell and fell and fell.

Alina collapsed to her knees at the sight of it. "Help," Aleksander moaned quietly, but she didn't move to help him. She wasn't sure she could.

"Help," he whispered again, then heaved himself to his feet. After a few steps, he recovered, his gait elegant and graceful, like he'd never been in a duel at all.

He looked down at her, his eyes a strange yellow, and she whimpered.

"Alina," he said, kneeling down next to her. She tried to shrink away, but he wrapped his arms around her and despite everything she found herself leaning her head against his chest, too stunned to cry.

She tried to speak, and stuttered out, "You're- you're a-"

"Hush, Alina."

For some reason, his attempts at comforting her just enraged her. "You're a _Sith Lord_!" Then the shudders returned. "You're- you're _the_ Sith Lord, the one who-"

He cut her off before she could accuse him of anything else, murmuring something she instantly wanted to unhear.

"The Jedi just tried to murder me," he said. "Me, and several other prominent politicians. They're trying to take control of the Republic."

"No. . ." She shook her head against it, but she immediately found herself re-examining every criticism she'd ever had of the Republic, and how it was linked to the Jedi. Jakku had been strafed on a Jedi's orders. Mal's trial was overseen by members of the Jedi Council, and Alina had barely been allowed in. And. . .

"Is that why they tried to get you to be Chancellor?" Having a Jedi as the Chancellor would be the ultimate consolidation of power.

Aleksander nodded gravely. "Yes. It was when I started refusing to follow the will of the Council instead of the will of the Senate that they turned against me, and assassination became their primary objective."

Alina swallowed. "Everyone on the Council was in on this?"

"Everyone."

"Zoya never mentioned it to me."

"Because she knew you wouldn't agree." He gave her a look. "You wouldn't agree, would you?"

She was taken aback by the sudden urgency of his tone, the way he withdrew from her slightly. "Of course not!"

"Good." He visibly relaxed. "I knew I could trust you."

"What-" She swallowed. "What happens now?"

"You probably shouldn't go back to the temple. I mean," he gave a harsh laugh, although there was nothing funny about this situation, "you just killed their grandmaster."

She flinched. _And not just her._ Nadia's corpse, lying still on the polished marble floors, came to mind. "I didn't mean-"

His hand fell onto her shoulder. "I know you didn't," he said gently, "but it was necessary, nonetheless."

Alina turned her head up to meet his gaze, then instantly regretted it. His eyes were still yellow.

"You're a Sith Lord," she repeated stupidly.

He cocked his head. "And?"

"You're- you're _evil_."

"The Dark Side isn't inherently evil, Alina," he told her soothingly, running a hand up and down her arm. Reluctantly, against her better judgement, she allowed herself to be comforted. "It's simply emotion, passion. Were your emotions for Mal evil? Any other of your friends?"

She had to shake her head at that.

"You're intimately aware of the Jedi's hypocrisy and backwardness. I know you are, that you've been as wronged by them as I have."

She closed her eyes against the world-changing words she knew were coming, even if she couldn't for the life of her have said what words they were.

"Alina," Aleksander whispered. "Join me."

She shook her head, face buried in her knees.

"Join me, become my apprentice. The Sith will teach you what the Jedi could never understand." He paused at her lack of response. "We can restore order to the galaxy."

She didn't look up.

"You can have your revenge against the Jedi."

Baghra's voice floated through her mind. _Revenge isn't the Jedi way._ It wasn't Alina's, either.

Aleksander paused briefly, then he said, voice heavy with emotion, "What happened to Mal, to Jakku, will never happen again."

Unbidden, she saw again Mal's pale body falling in the Grand Convocation Chamber, the anger and righteousness still ringing around the room. She saw the surface of Jakku from the darkest pits of her imagination, the sand turned to glass by the countless lasers that strafed it.

She lifted her chin, and met his eyes: fiery gold, blazing, like the edge of a coin that caught the light as it was flipped.

Coins hadn't been used in years, replaced with the galactic standard of credit chips. Alina would sometimes uncover old ones on Jakku, the array of metals they contained usually worthless enough that she could keep them, collect them around her little hovel, like the decorative items she could never afford.

Funny, that she could focus on such a minor comparison when so much was at stake. But maybe that was the only way sentients like them could deal will vast things: by breaking them down piece by piece, breaking galaxies apart star by star.

Breaking an order apart, Jedi by Jedi.

Slowly, she nodded her head. "Alright." Her voice was hoarse from disuse. "I'll do it."

A beatific smile spread across Aleksander's face. His hand came from where it had rested itself on her shoulder to gently grip her chin, and turn her face up again.

"I knew I could rely on you to make the right choice," he said. "You always do. You'll be fantastic, a treasure. A queen among Sith Lords." He seemed to halt at that. "Queen. . ." He smiled again. "Koroleva." He nodded. "That's what your Sith title will be. Darth Koroleva."

Alina felt the shudders begin to rack her shoulders before she even computed what was happening, and she began to cry.

She didn't even know why: the rawness of her new reality, the tenderness of his touch, the acceptance she'd craved for so long. She crumpled inwards, feeling her chest cave in from the pressure of everything that had happened, hot tears streaking through the grime and sweat on her face.

Aleksander had what he wanted, so he didn't stay holding her on the floor for much longer. Instead, he left her there to weep and went to comm someone on his comlink. She didn't hear much of what was said through her sobs, but what she did hear didn't make much sense at all.

"The time has come," he said, and she had no idea what it meant, but she felt like she was teetering on the edge of an abyss. One push, and she would fall, and keep falling forever.

The next words were the push, and once they were said she wouldn't feel solid ground under her feet for nearly twenty years. Not until she looked upon the last of the Jedi, who was no longer a Jedi, and decided exactly what she didn't want her legacy to be.

"Execute Order Sixty-Six."

* * *

Thankfully, Zoya wasn't in the temple when Order 66 came through. She had taken Nina to the only spot on Coruscant that wasn't paved over with concrete and buildings: a reservation set aside for the B'ankora, whose native planet had been destroyed and had had to be relocated to living on Coruscant. She liked the area, and had long fought against greedy senators who wanted to buy up the land for one reason or another and urbanise it.

(It would be urbanised in the not-so-distant future, when the Empire 'reclaimed the land for the people of Coruscant' and she was no longer around to protect it, but there was no way she could know that now.)

It relaxed her, feeling the animal and plant life around them, the Force that flowed between them. That day, it also saved her life.

She hadn't taken any clones with them to the reserve, so seeing as Order 66 was carried out by the clone troopers, they were in no danger from it at that moment. But they still _felt it_ ; even if Zoya hadn't been meditating with Nina at that moment, the deaths of nearly ten thousand Jedi through the Force would've sent shockwaves through them both. Zoya stumbled, tears springing to her eyes, and Nina flat out vomited.

Flashes of what was happening, too fast to really comprehend, blasted through them:

Botkin, shot down in his starfighter over Cato Neimoidia.

Sergei, fleeing a blaster-wielding mudtrooper on Mimban.

And Marie, going through the lightsaber forms in the temple less than twenty minutes' drive away, so caught up in the motions that she didn't notice the troopers marching towards her. . .

Zoya's eyes snapped open. "We need to get back to the temple." One look at Nina, her chubby hands, youthful face, obvious vulnerability, and she amended her statement. " _I_ need to get back to the temple."

Nina shivered. "Master?" she asked in a high, querulous voice. "What happened?"

Zoya didn't answer, because Zoya didn't _know_. What had happened, to cause the Jedi to be so thoroughly wiped out? So quickly?

Was it a Separatist plot, horribly successful? Or an inside job?

She needed answers, and she couldn't get them here.

She glanced at Nina. "Stay here," she ordered, trying to ignore the tremor in her voice. "Stay here. I'll be back before nightfall. If anyone comes along, _stay out of sight_."

If anything, Nina's eyes only got wider. "What's going on?" she asked, her fear leaking into her voice. She was so young to be dealing with a war, and Zoya felt a sudden rush of protectiveness, love, fear. This was her padawan, _her_ responsibility, and she would see her through this.

"I don't know," she admitted, as much as she hated admitting it. "But I'll be back soon."

And with that, she hopped on the speeder they'd brought here and took off, quickly leaving the small patch of greenery far behind.

* * *

Nikolai had heard about the slaughter at the Jedi Temple. Everyone had heard about the slaughter at the Jedi Temple, where a regiment of clonetroopers had been dispatched to march through, killing everybody. If you had an office with a window that faced in that direction, you could see the smoke from the Senate Rotunda.

What he wanted to know was why it had happened.

Chancellor Morozova had called an emergency Senate meeting, hopefully to explain just that: _why._ Because, for all that Nikolai disliked and distrusted the man, Morozova was a Jedi himself, and ought to know why the order he'd dedicated his life to had been executed so suddenly and swiftly. There were rumours that not even the younglings had been spared.

Nikolai was scared. For himself, certainly - he was a well-known friend of the Jedi; could there be any political fallout from this? - but more so for his friends. For Alina.

Oh, stars, _what had happened to Alina?_

He watched with bated breath from Naboo's senate pod as the Chancellor took the podium, and when he listened, he listened well.

"It is with a heavy heart that I have to report the treachery of the Jedi on this day," Morozova said, voice heavy with emotion, "and to report that due to my intense dedication to this government, they tried to assassinate me as a part of their coup. I was once one of them, it's true," he assured them all, "but I am loyal to the citizens of the galaxy, and the Republic.

"I cannot say what lingering effects this attempt on my life may leave on my physical and mental health," he placed a hand on his heart, "but I assure you: my resolve has _never been stronger_."

Chills went through Nikolai at the sudden passion - the sudden _power_ \- in his voice.

"Any remaining Jedi will be hunted down and defeated," Morozova promised, "and a sweep through their correspondences has revealed them to have colluded with the highest level of the Separatist command. Through their treachery and extermination, we have discovered the location of the Separatist war council's high command, and I have already dispatched the necessary means of eliminating those traitors and ending this all here and now. The Clone Wars," he raised his voice, " _end today!_ "

There was loud cheering around the room, even as something sunk in Nikolai's gut.

"In order to ensure security and continuing stability," he continued, "the Republic will be reorganised into the first _Galactic Empire_ ," Nikolai shivered again at the way he said the words, but it was nothing to the sweet, almost fatherly tone with which he said, "for a safe, and secure, society."

Shouts and cheering and clapping met his statement, but Nikolai only sat back in his chair.

An _Empire._ To forego all semblance of democracy. . .

How could he do this? How did he have the power to do this?

He knew the answer, of course. It was all those _blasted_ emergency powers he'd been handed during the war.

This was the death of the Jedi, and with them, the Republic they'd served. The very idea of the democracy they'd held so dear.

For the first time, Nikolai hoped Alina was dead. AT least then she wouldn't have to see how much worse their already failing government had become.

Tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them back; no good to have holocams picking up on them, or he'd have even more trouble than he was already did, as a friend of the Jedi.

But words - now treasonous - came to mind, and he said them in the solitude of his pod, quiet enough that no bugs could hear him, no politicians could report him.

"So this is how liberty dies," he whispered to himself. "With thunderous applause."

* * *

Curiously enough, there was no one around when Zoya arrived at the temple. No one, that is, except the clonetroopers milling around the doors in order to prevent entry.

Zoya was a general in the Grand Army of the Republic. In theory, she could have marched up to the troopers - whom she recognised as _members of her legion_ \- and demanded they let her in. But she didn't.

Something wasn't right about this, and until she knew what it was, she refused to trust anyone who wasn't Jedi.

Zoya had grown up in the temple, from the time when she was a newborn, and she'd never stopped living there. It was her world, it was her home; she knew every nook and cranny in there - and every secret passage. The clones had no such knowledge. Getting in wasn't the problem.

The problem was what she found there.

Death.

Death, everywhere.

The corpses of Jedi littered the floor. Blaster wounds were plastered on their chests, heads - in some horrific cases, their thighs, where the major artery had been struck and they'd been left to bleed to death on the floor. She was still reeling from the execution of several Jedi Masters when she staggered in the younglings' dormitories and saw the carnage there.

It had been the night cycle on this part of the planet when the attack had struck, she could tell. Not because she was in any way using psychometry - she didn't dare, with all this death around; she might end up touching the Dark Side by accident - but because there were about two or three dozen younglings in here, hiding under their beds when the attack came, who never got out before they were also killed by blaster shots. There was nearly one to each bed, some with arms or legs sticking out from under the cots, some in complete darkness, the dust already settling on their frozen faces.

Zoya crouched down next to one. She pushed the bed aside. Felt the youngling's wrist for a pulse, even if she could feel through the Force the black hole where their life should be, the shadow of a moon cast where the sun had vanished.

She dropped the cold limb like it burned. The youngling was a small human boy, dark hair dirty with dust, copper eyes open and unseeing. He was about the same age as Nina - she'd _seen_ him with Nina, when she'd come to pick her up from these very quarters to move into her new ones. They'd been friends.

There was a vice around her heart. It kept squeezing tighter, and tighter, until-

Her scream echoed loudly, down the hallway, out into the polluted Coruscanti air, ringing, ringing, ringing. It sounded like the aftershock of a blast that didn't stop ringing in her ears, would never stop ringing in her ears until the day she died.

Zoya shook her head, aware her shoulders were shaking. She needed to get out of here, needed to pick up Nina, needed to go somewhere else. . .but she had nowhere to go.

The Jedi Order was her life. _Had been_ her life.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what was happening, didn't know what had happened, and she _didn't know what to do-_

This time, her scream was short, sharp and shrill. It died out quickly - quick enough that the echo of running feet alerted her to what was coming.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," she muttered to herself. The clones were coming, and she had a nagging feeling that she couldn't face them, that they weren't to be trusted.

She felt along the edge of the panels that lined the wall, and released the breath she'd been holding when she hit the right one and it swung open, the hardwood hiding a dark, narrow cavern behind it. She'd climbed in and shut in behind her bare moments before the clones came into the room.

"Anyone in here, Oddball?" one of them shouted to the other. Zoya squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to calm her racing heart. Oddball had been a clone in her legion, a sweetheart who always thought about others.

"Not that I can see," Oddball replied, "but we need to stay vigilant. You know the orders: all Jedi are to be executed on sight."

Against her will, a breath hissed out between her teeth. She'd been right to follow the Force, to hide from them. _All Jedi are to be executed?_

She listened closely until she heard the footsteps leave the younglings' room and continue down the corridor, before she stretched out and shifted onto her hands and knees. She couldn't see anything in the passage, but she didn't dare to light her saber in case the sound echoed and one of the clones heard it. So she crawled forwards in the dark, agonisingly slowly. She turned one corner, then another, desperately trying to keep quiet, until-

She felt ahead of her, then to the sides. Sure enough, the passage had stopped. Either it was a dead end, and she needed to turn around, or. . .

She shoved on the panel. Sure enough, it opened, and she tumbled out into daylight.

Someone gasped loudly; it was all instinct that had Zoya reaching for her lightsaber as she fell, then lighting it as she landed, agile as a cat, crouched and ready to spring. She glanced up to assess her attacker, bringing her lightsaber closer to her chest-

-and released a breath.

It was Nikolai.

He still seemed shocked by her sudden appearance - sure enough, a quick glance around revealed that the tunnel had dumped her just outside the Senate Rotunda - but she waited for the shock to melt away into his usual good humour, for him to make some comment after Jedi in the ventilation shafts.

That humour never came. Instead, his face hardened and he grabbed her hand, dragging her into a dark alleyway between two buildings nearby.

"You escaped the Purges?" he asked, voice low and frantic, glancing over his shoulder for any potential listeners.

"The Purges? Nikolai," Zoya hissed, _"I have no idea what's going on."_

He glanced back at her. The darkness of the situation was reflected in his baby blue irises; his mouth twisted downwards, lips pinched together. "The Chancellor's declared himself Emperor," he said. "The Jedi supposedly attempted a coup against him, and they've now been declared traitors to the government. Order Sixty-Six was an order to all clones to kill every Jedi, no matter their age. The two-hundred-twelfth legion was sent to march on the Temple and execute everyone inside."

"The two-hundred-twelfth?" She felt sick. Her legion, the men she'd fought and killed and nearly died alongside, had just killed all her brothers and sisters. "Why-"

"I don't know how he got the clones to comply, but he did," Nikolai said, "and you need to run. I have a hyperspace-worthy craft; you can come with me to Naboo. I'm leaving now-"

"I need to pick up Nina." Her world was shattering, spiralling away from her. She couldn't think straight.

"Then take this," he shoved a credit chip into her hand; she gaped at the amount of money on it, "and buy a ship. _Get off Coruscant._ It's not safe for Jedi here. You need to get away, and I'll try to get you information about the situation at a later date."

"Alright." She slid the credit chip into her pocket.

"Change your clothes. Hide your lightsaber."

"I know." Her mind was racing suddenly, and she knew why. Her life was at risk. Zoya always felt a sort of clarity in high-risk situations. "I'll be careful."

"Good." Nikolai glanced back out at the alley. "I need to go, before my absence is noticed."

"Wait - one more thing." He stopped, looking at her with such desperation and fear on his face that her heart ached. She swallowed several times, then asked in a low voice, "Alina?"

Nikolai shook his dead. "I don't know what happened to her," he said. "I think she's dead."

"Okay." Zoya was still shaking, and now the shaking got worse. _Alina_ \- her student, her padawan. Her _friend._

Sometime in the future, she would learn the truth about Alina, and her link to the chrome-clad monster that emerged from the shadows of the Empire to hunt Jedi. She would keep the secret from everyone until she died by the monster's hand.

But she didn't know the secret now. Now, all she had was a credit chip, a lightsaber and a padawan who needed her. She didn't have time to grieve for everyone and everything she'd lost, so she didn't.

* * *

The sudden, overwhelming sense of _death_ staggered her, and Alina found herself collapsing to the floor in the middle of the refresher while she was trying to wash her hands and face. They were still cloggy from crying, and now her soul felt cloggy as well, like every individual death of the Jedi was on her shoulders.

She couldn't think why, but something told her it was true.

She did her best to ignore the feeling at first, shutting out the Force and leaving it be for the moment. She had a curious thought that kept nagging at her, so she found herself requesting to an aide that the random droid parts she'd been studying be brought to her from her room in the Jedi Temple, and less than an hour later they were sitting in front of her on the floor of the living room of Aleksander's quarters, the silver carapaces gleaming up at her like the curves of a helmet.

Which was exactly what she made them into.

She reached for the Force again, for the Dark Side, that simmering cold power in her chest, and felt along the seams of the metal, feeling it bend and break and meld and forge under her probes. She sat there, legs crossed, for hours on end until she finally came up with a finished product.

A silver suit of armour, glinting hard and cold and polished in the light, built exactly to her specifications.

With her robes on, it was mildly uncomfortable to wear, but she adapted to that. She edited it a little more, and folded over her robes where more padding was needed. Finally, because she couldn't deny her own flair for drama, she salvaged a crimson cape that had probably once been worn by one of the Chancellor's red guards, and attached it to her shoulders.

It wasn't ideal, but she could correct it later, get more comfortable underclothes, and at the end of the day it moved with her, bending at the joints easily, light on her body. A quick glance in one of Aleksander's many mirrors told her everything she needed to know: she cut a dramatic figure with the armour and the cape and the saber, a fairytale figure from the age of the Old Republic, a warrior to be feared and respected. She liked it.

To the galaxy, she had been more legend than person as Alina Starkiller, the Hero With No Fear. But Alina Starkiller was gone. She'd died with the Republic, with the Jedi, with the trust and love she'd placed in her closest friends.

Now, Koroleva would make herself a different legend. A better legend.

Her comm pinged, and she checked it on reflex. It was Aleksander, with a long message and a task for her to carry out. She skipped over things about the political situation she would need to ask clarification on later - the 'Galactic Empire' and something about an armoured battle station - and instead focused on the task ahead of her:

 _Travel to the Separatist base on Mustafar, wipe out their leadership and send the droid shutdown command code. This will end the war._

She nodded her head, unused to the new weight of the helmet, and closed the comm. Her cape snapped around her heels as she turned sharply to stride out of the Chancellor's quarters, ignoring the stares she received when she marched into the corridors outside. Soon they would know her. Soon they would respect her, as they had never respected Alina Starkiller.

Alina Starkiller was dead. Her remnants would be slowly chipped away, erased, until a new, better being replaced her, until only that being was still there.

Starkiller would die, but Koroleva would remain.

Koroleva turned down another hallway and out onto the landing pad. She had work to do, and she did it well.

* * *

Aleksander sat back in his seat and smiled.

Everything couldn't have gone better.

He would be the first to admit that his plan to become Emperor of the galaxy through the Clone Wars was deeply flawed. It was very dependent on subterfuge and improvisation, but it had _worked_. The Jedi were dead, _his mother_ was dead, the galaxy was his, and so was Alina.

The Jedi had died quickly and easily. The biological chips his late Sith Master had commissioned to be implanted in the clonetroopers' brains had worked perfectly, overriding their free will and forcing them to slaughter their Jedi generals the moment they heard the code phrase. A few had malfunctioned, as was to be expected, and a few Jedi survived, but soon enough he would send Alina to deal with them, offer them a choice.

It was a simple choice, really.

Join the newly formed Inquisitorius, a Dark Side-using legion of Jedi hunters, or die. Already there were reports of a Jedi survivor on Mimban; Sergei had been stationed there, and as an already fairly unstable Jedi, he'd make a good Inquisitor.

Yes, he would send Alina to deal with them. She might hesitate at first, the Jedi teachings leaving their mark on her, but over time she'd learn to embrace the Dark Side readily, shake off the Jedi's shackles, and be as dutiful a Sith apprentice as it was possible to be. He had foreseen it.

He had expended too much effort to turn her to make waste of her talents now. Getting her sent to Jakku, fixing Oretsev's trial against him, making sure Lantsov and Zoya stayed far away at the time when she needed a friend the most. He'd orchestrated her loneliness and betrayals until finally, he was all she had. The decision she'd made in his office was hardly a decision at all: she had no other path, so she would continue to walk along the one she'd been walking from the moment she'd opened the Sith holocron he left out for her to find.

And it had worked.

Alina was his.

So he sat back in his chair, and smiled. Everything had gone according to plan, and now the future of the galaxy was laid at his feet. Everything he could have ever wanted and more was his; he had done it. He had it.

The sun had set on the Republic. It was time for the Empire to rise.

* * *

 **Thank you all for reading!**


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